BINGHAMTON, N.Y. (WENY) — Some people are focused on putting an end to the COVID-19 pandemic, others are looking to the future in preparation for the next pandemic.

Nicole Hassoun, philosophy professor at Binghamton University and Visiting Scholar at Cornell, says research suggests the world is facing threats of more frequent pandemics.

"Potentially much worse ones. Partly this comes from the fact that we haven't invested enough in fighting many other diseases besides COVID," Hassoun said.

According to Hassoun, the threat of another pandemic comes from diseases that we know about and ones we don't know about. Researchers are focused on creating global health initiatives to respond to this threat before it's too late.

"We have basic health systems in place for everyone so we can vaccinate people quickly so that if the next pandemic doesn't kill one percent of the global population, but ten percent of all people."

Hassoun says the first step is to get manufacturers on board here in the United States and around the world, making things like PPE and vaccines more accessible.

"Here we're closing in on 45 or 50 percent of the population getting vaccinated and in other parts of the world it's three percent," Hassoun said.

In April of 2020, the World Health Organization created an initiative to develop and distribute the COVID-19 vaccine in a fair and equitable way.

"The COVAX initiative is aiming to vaccinate 20% of the global population, but really to control the pandemic. To ensure we're not going to get new variants and things, we need to do more than that."

If companies, like Pfizer and Moderna, shared knowledge on how to create vaccines with other countries, Hassoun says they could be better prepared to fight diseases like COVID-19.

"Knowledge sharing. Pfizer and Moderna have a really hard to manufacture vaccine where you need a lot of knowledge about mRNA and they should be required to share it. Then people can manufacture it. It's not just the patents, it's absolutely the basic health systems. You can't just have one piece of the puzzle, you need all of the puzzle."

Hassoun believes this will help with the COVID-19 pandemic and other pandemics, but she says political issues can create roadblocks.

"China jumped in first. We were really one of the last ones to get on board and that's because of the administration changed. As soon as Biden came in, we joined in on COVAX," Hassoun said.

There isn't a timeline for when the next pandemic could hit, Hassoun says taking what we know from the COVID-19 pandemic and staying prepared could prevent people from getting sick, being hospitalized or even dying.