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The fast‐paced field of synthetic biology is fundamentally changing the global biosecurity framework. Current biosecurity regulations and strategies are based on previous governance paradigms for pathogen‐oriented security, recombinant DNA research, and broader concerns related to genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Many scholarly discussions and biosecurity practitioners are therefore concerned that synthetic biology outpaces established biosafety and biosecurity measures to prevent deliberate and malicious or inadvertent and accidental misuse of synthetic biology's processes or products. This commentary proposes three strategies to improve biosecurity: Security must be treated as an investment in the future applicability of the technology; social scientists and policy makers should be engaged early in technology development and forecasting; and coordination among global stakeholders is necessary to ensure acceptable levels of risk. Graphical Abstract Biosecurity policies and practices must be updated to accommodate the novel challenges associated with synthetic biology and to maximize technological benefits while minimizing its dual‐use potential. This Commentary proposes three strategies to improve biosecurity.

The implementation of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has had significant impacts on biomedical research, often complicating data sharing among researchers. The recently announced proposal for a new EU Data Governance Act is a promising step towards facilitating data sharing, if it can interplay well with the GDPR. Graphical Abstract The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has affected biomedical research, often complicating data sharing. The recently announced proposal for a new EU Data Governance Act, is a promising step towards facilitating data sharing.

The ongoing severe acute respiratory sickness coronavirus 2 (SARS‐CoV‐2) pandemic has resulted in more than 3,600,000 detected cases of COVID‐19 illness and nearly 260,000 deaths worldwide as of May 6, 2020. Recently, BCG vaccination was shown to correlate with reduced COVID‐19 case fatality rates (preprint: Miller et al , 2020; preprint: Sala & Miyakawa, 2020; https://www.jsatonotes.com/2020/03/if-i-were-north-americaneuropeanaustral.html ). The most recent data from publicly available resources also indicate that both COVID‐19 incidence and total deaths are strongly associated with the presence or absence of national mandatory BCG vaccination programs. As seen in Table 1, seven of eight countries with very low numbers of total deaths (< 40 per 1 million population) adopted a mandatory BCG vaccination program using one of a set of 6 separate BCG strains (Table 1). In contrast, COVID‐19 mortality was markedly higher in countries where BCG vaccination is not widely administered or is given only to high‐risk groups. COVID‐19 mortality was also higher in countries where widespread BCG vaccination was discontinued more than 20 years ago and in countries that used the BCG Denmark strain regularly or temporarily. This raises the question of whether BCG vaccination and reduced COVID‐19 mortality are causally related. An additional question is why different BCG strains may be variably associated with mortality. Graphical Abstract Is there more to BCG vaccination and reduced COVID‐19 case fatality rates than a mere correlation? Masayuki Miyasaka comments on this timely but intriguing question and provide some interesting points to consider.

On November 14 last year, the British Guardian published an account from an anonymous whistleblower at Google, accusing the company of misconduct in regard to handling sensitive health data. The whistleblower works for Project Nightingale, an attempt by Google to get into the lucrative US healthcare market, by storing and processing the personal medical data of up to 50 million customers of Ascension, one of America's largest healthcare providers. As the Wall Street Journal had already reported 3 days earlier, and as the whistleblower confirmed, neither was the data anonymized when transmitted from Ascension nor were patients or their doctors notified, let alone asked for consent to sharing their data with Google (Copeland, 2019; Pilkington, 2019). As a result, Google employees had full access to non‐anonymous patient health data. Google Health chief David Feinberg commented that all Google employees involved had gone through medical ethics training and were approved by Ascension (Feinberg, 2019). Graphical Abstract The Google's Project Nightingale is meant to collect and analyse the detailed personal‐health information of millions of people across the USA. As discussed by C.O. Schneble, B.S. Elger and D.M. Shaw, without thorough ethical measures, such undertaking is at risk of misconduct.

Recognising that every organism is conscious opens opportunities for experimental investigation and evidence‐based understanding of this crucial biological capability.

Genomic data sharing is becoming more important as scientists join forces across borders in biomedical research for the benefit of patients and society. The EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) helps simplify sharing of such data at the European and international level. However, initial optimism has dried up as EU member states go their own ways in implementing the GDPR into national laws, and as legal cases challenging data sharing reach courts. Codes of conduct could facilitate data sharing in Europe and better connect it to global health research. This commentary explains the potential of codes of conduct for addressees and drafters. Codes are no panacea though; other measures may be necessary to ensure that Europe remains collaborative and competitive in biomedical research. Nevertheless, codes of conduct would bring immediate benefits and, in the long term, could foster a true European ecosystem for joint biomedical research and easier international data sharing. Graphical Abstract In this commentary, F. Molnár‐Gábor and J.O. Korbel help us to understand how Codes of Conduct would facilitate the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in simplifying sharing of genomic data at the European and international level.

Current demand for SARS‐CoV‐2 testing is straining material resource and labor capacity around the globe. As a result, the public health and clinical community are hindered in their ability to monitor and contain the spread of COVID‐19. Despite broad consensus that more testing is needed, pragmatic guidance toward realizing this objective has been limited. This paper addresses this limitation by proposing a novel and geographically agnostic framework (the 4Ps framework) to guide multidisciplinary, scalable, resource‐efficient, and achievable efforts toward enhanced testing capacity. The 4Ps (Prioritize, Propagate, Partition, and Provide) are described in terms of specific opportunities to enhance the volume, diversity, characterization, and implementation of SARS‐CoV‐2 testing to benefit public health. Coordinated deployment of the strategic and tactical recommendations described in this framework has the potential to rapidly expand available testing capacity, improve public health decision‐making in response to the COVID‐19 pandemic, and/or to be applied in future emergent disease outbreaks. Graphical Abstract This paper proposes a novel 4Ps Framework (Prioritize, Propagate, Partition, and Provide) to guide multidisciplinary, scalable, resource‐efficient, and achievable efforts towards enhanced SARS‐CoV‐2 testing capacity and improved public health decision‐making in response to the COVID‐19 pandemic.

A multi-person interview on the unrolling corona pandemic with Samuel Alizon, Akiko Iwasaki, Gerard Krause and Rino Rappuoli.A multi-person interview on the unrolling corona pandemic with Samuel Alizon, Akiko Iwasaki, Gerard Krause and Rino Rappuoli.

On December 31, 2019, the Chinese government officially announced the identification of a new type of coronavirus (SARS‐CoV‐2) as the etiological cause of a severe acute respiratory syndrome in Wuhan city, Hubei Province. Over the next weeks, SARS‐CoV‐2 caused a global pandemic as officially declared by the WHO on March 11, 2020, with confirmed cases and deaths in more than 166 countries. We are experiencing a worldwide phenomenon of unprecedented social and economic consequences. Since the beginning of the COVID‐19 outbreak, there have been fears that the epidemic could strongly impact weaker healthcare systems in poor‐resource settings, especially in Sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA). The 2 million Chinese nationals that live and work in Africa could potentially contribute to the spread of COVID‐19 on the continent. Graphical Abstract What are the prospects for the SARS‐CoV‐2 pandemic in Africa? Virginia Quaresima, Matteo Naldini and Daniela Cirillo analyse the situation in this timely commentary.

Animal research has had a vital role in many scientific and medical advances of the past century and continues to aid in the understanding of various diseases. The use of the 3Rs, replacement, reduction and refinement, is crucial to continuously reduce the number and suffering of animals in research but a good regulatory regime as found in the UK can help to reduce further the number of animals used.