Recent reports involving attempts to illegally import a highly pathogenic, wheat-infecting fungus into the U.S. have renewed attention on laboratory biosecurity. These developments, alongside earlier speculation about the origins of SARS-CoV-2, have prompted ongoing discussions about access to high-containment laboratories and the safeguards in place to prevent accidental or intentional release of dangerous pathogens. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been sustained interest in these facilities, particularly those that work with high-consequence, easily transmissible agents. Such labs, where containment measures increase with pathogen risk, vary in capability and security, and are classified as part of a tiered biosafety framework (see Fig. 1).
High-containment facilities—previously concentrated with a limited number of tightly regulated national research institutions—are now increasingly geographically distributed across a broader range of countries with widely variable biosecurity frameworks, regulatory oversight, and resource capabilities. In a 2023 report, the Global BioLabs project highlighted a significant uptick in the number of new BSL-4 laboratories being built, mostly in Asia, with over half of them in countries that had never previously operated such a facility. Further, more than 75% of BSL-4 labs are in cities (defined in the report as having a population within a 2.5-mile radius of the facility exceeding 50,000 people)—a fact that has raised concern among some biosecurity experts over the potential for rapidly escalating public health emergencies in the event of an accidental release or infection.
While the proliferation and geographic expansion of high-containment laboratories has raised concerns among some biosecurity experts, this trend reflects a deliberate operational shift. BSL-3 and BSL-4 facilities offer critical capabilities—including rapid diagnostics, advanced pathogen characterization, and real-time support during biological incidents—that often exceed the baseline capacities of many public health systems. In an increasingly interconnected world, there is a growing imperative to decentralize response capabilities—bringing high-containment diagnostics and analytical capacity close to the point of need to enable rapid, coordinated public health interventions. Outbreaks involving high-consequence pathogens—such as Ebola, Zika, and SARS-CoV-2—are among the more recent in a long history of biological events that have focused global efforts on expanding diagnostics and containment laboratory capacity.
For public health and emergency management professionals, the implications of this expansion are immediate and far-reaching. These facilities are no longer distant, specialized research hubs; they are becoming integral components of a global health security system. In the United States, many now operate within or in close coordination with state, local, and multijurisdictional emergency response networks. Beyond traditional biosafety and biosecurity considerations, high-containment laboratories now intersect directly with critical domains such as situational awareness, incident coordination, public-risk communication, and disease surveillance under One Health frameworks. This piece explores five operational domains to help public health and emergency management professionals understand, anticipate, and strengthen the evolving role of high-containment laboratories within integrated health security and response systems.
Strategic Value and Public Health Benefits
BSL-3 and BSL-4 laboratories are no longer peripheral research assets—they are frontline components of a modern, responsive public health system. These high-containment facilities enable rapid identification, characterization, and control of high-consequence pathogens and play a critical role in both routine surveillance and emergency response.
Their strategic value lies in a range of specialized capabilities that, when leveraged effectively, can substantially accelerate response timelines and improve health outcomes:
- Rapid diagnostics that support early identification of novel or re-emerging pathogens;
- Advanced vaccine and therapeutic development using high-containment platforms;
- Critical research on disease transmission dynamics, virulence factors, and countermeasure efficacy;
- Enhanced multisectoral coordination across clinical, veterinary, and public health laboratories; and
- Reduced diagnostic delays where local capacity is limited.
Globally, the majority of BSL-4 laboratories are operated by public health institutions. More than 60% are government-run and focused on human health, with over half of animal-capable facilities located in the United States. This positioning makes them essential to understanding zoonotic disease dynamics and advancing medical countermeasures using validated animal models.
As their global footprint grows, these labs are increasingly viewed not just as research institutions but as operational partners in outbreak response. Their contributions are most impactful when embedded within real-time response frameworks, particularly for
- Viral genome-sequencing and molecular epidemiology, which inform clinical and public health decision-making;
- Timely development of public health guidance during high-consequence events;
- Surveillance support under One Health frameworks, especially in spillover-prone regions; and
- Operational risk assessments and situational awareness for incident commanders and emergency managers.
When effectively integrated into broader response systems, high-containment laboratories can help bridge the gap between scientific insight and real-world public health action.
Biosafety and Biosecurity Oversight
With increased capacity comes increased responsibility. BSL-3 and BSL-4 laboratories must maintain strict biosafety protocols to prevent laboratory-acquired infections and accidental pathogen release. At the same time, they are subject to biosecurity measures designed to prevent misuse, insider threats, or dual-use research risks. In the United States, high-containment laboratories are governed by a combination of federal regulatory frameworks and biosafety guidance. The Federal Select Agent Program (FSAP)—jointly managed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service—oversees the possession, use, and transfer of select biological agents and toxins that may pose severe threats to human, animal, or plant health. Facilities and individuals working with these agents must register with FSAP and comply with strict requirements for documentation, security, personnel reliability, and incident reporting. In addition to regulatory oversight, several foundational guidance documents shape the design, operation, and safety culture of BSL-3 and BSL-4 laboratories. The Biosafety in Microbiological and Biomedical Laboratories manual serves as the primary source for U.S. biosafety practices, offering detailed recommendations for containment, risk assessment, and worker protection in biological laboratories.
Globally, however, the picture is not as clear. As new facilities come online—especially in jurisdictions without long-standing experience in containment labs—oversight mechanisms across the board are more likely to be uneven, under-resourced, or absent. According to the Global Biolabs Report of 2023, of the 27 countries with BSL-4 facilities, only one of them scores high on metrics assessing governance of dual-use research. Furthermore, most of the new and planned BSL-4 labs are in countries that score in the bottom 50th percentile in terms of governance stability, according to an index created by the Global BioLabs project, which pulls data from the World Bank, Freedom House, and the Nuclear Threat Initiative.
Familiarity and alignment with the World Health Organization Laboratory Biosafety Manual provides a means for countries with limited biosecurity experience to further inform laboratory biosafety and biosecurity practices and align themselves with global standards. For public health and emergency management professionals, adherence to these frameworks is essential for understanding the operational expectations of high-containment labs, ensuring informed coordination during emergencies, and supporting consistent biosafety practices across jurisdictions. More than half of the countries with operational or planned BSL-4 laboratories are members of the Global Health Security Agenda, an initiative that engages operational personnel from across the public health preparedness enterprise. The initiative builds capacity and shares best practices, providing a touchpoint that local and jurisdictional public health professionals can use to facilitate engagement with high-containment laboratory personnel and leadership.
Public health agencies should proactively engage with laboratory personnel and key leadership to establish communication protocols, clarify reporting pathways for unusual or notifiable events, and define jurisdictional roles before emergencies occur. Doing so enhances transparency, supports coordinated response, and ensures that high-containment laboratories function as trusted, integrated partners within the broader public health system. Providing further guidance on the safe and secure operation of high-containment laboratories, the Global Health Security Agenda’s Action Package Prevent-3 Biosecurity and Biosafety establishes a basis for a common understanding of safety between laboratories and local public health.
Community Engagement and Risk Communications
Clear, consistent communication about the role of high-containment laboratories is not optional, but rather foundational to public trust and emergency readiness. Public health practitioners are uniquely positioned to ensure that messaging about a lab’s purpose, safety protocols, and public health value is accurate and sustained over time. Effective communication must be a permanent function of preparedness, not an ad hoc response to public concern.
Risk communication should begin well before a crisis. It must be built on ongoing relationships among public health authorities, laboratory leadership, and the communities in which these facilities operate. Embedding high-containment laboratories within the broader emergency management framework—through joint planning, public briefings, advisory engagement, and participation in local exercises—can strengthen transparency, build operational familiarity, and enhance response capability.
To institutionalize these efforts, public health professionals should prioritize the formal integration of laboratory communication pathways into emergency operations plans, joint information system protocols, and interagency coordination frameworks. This would ensure timely information flow, align situational awareness across stakeholders, and support coherent public messaging. When risk communication predicated on trusted relationships is structured and coordinated in advance, response personnel and communities are better positioned to navigate high-consequence biological events effectively.
Clarifying Laboratory Roles in Multiagency Response Environments
As high-containment laboratories become more commonplace, it is critical for local and regional public health and emergency management personnel to understand their operational roles within a multiagency response environment. These labs are powerful assets for detecting, characterizing, and studying dangerous pathogens, but they are not designed to operate independently. Without a clear role definition and pre-established relationships, response activities risk becoming fragmented, delayed, or misaligned.
BSL-3 and BSL-4 facilities often sit within academic, federal, or private-sector institutions, operating under distinct governance structures that may or may not be directly linked to public health or emergency management systems. During an incident, this can lead to confusion about responsibilities for sample handling, result reporting, public notification, and regulatory triggers. Public health practitioners must understand not only what these labs can do, but when and how their outputs fit into broader response workflows, especially as lab findings may ultimately influence important operational decisions about containment zones, clinical guidance, public communication, and resource allocation.
Clarifying roles in advance—through memoranda of understanding, joint protocols, and inclusion in regional planning exercises—can help ensure that laboratory contributions are timely and actionable. Public health agencies should work with containment lab leadership to define expectations for alert thresholds, sample referral processes, data-sharing formats, and notification responsibilities. These agreements also help address overlapping authorities or jurisdictional complexities that often arise when high-containment labs serve multicounty, multistate, or cross-sectoral functions.
Ultimately, ensuring that BSL-3 and BSL-4 laboratories are functionally integrated into multiagency response systems depends not just on infrastructure or capabilities, but on mutual understanding of roles and limitations. For emergency managers and public health officials, knowing when and how to engage these labs—and what support or outputs to expect—can significantly enhance the speed and effectiveness of the overall response.
Bridging Containment and Response Systems
To maximize their public health value, BSL-3 and BSL-4 laboratories must be deliberately and operationally integrated into public health surveillance systems, emergency management structures, and healthcare response networks—not left to operate in isolation. While their core missions often center on diagnostics, research, and countermeasure development, the real-world utility of these facilities hinges on how well they are embedded within broader preparedness and response frameworks. Effective integration requires formal infrastructure and routine collaboration. At a minimum, high-containment labs should be connected to local- and state-level surveillance systems to enable near real-time data sharing for items such as pathogen detection and strain characterization. They must also be incorporated into emergency operations plans and incident command structures, with clearly defined roles during outbreak response, surge testing, and biological incident management.
Effective integration of high-containment laboratories into emergency response systems requires more than infrastructure or containment capability—it requires proactive, pre-incident coordination across agencies and jurisdictions. These facilities house immense scientific and technical expertise that can be leveraged to support critical decision-making during human and animal health emergencies. Joint training, interagency exercises, and pre-established communication protocols are essential to ensure that this expertise, along with laboratory data and insights, is rapidly translated into timely, actionable decisions during emergencies. Including laboratory representatives in regional preparedness coalitions and public health emergency preparedness planning efforts fosters the familiarity and trust needed for rapid mobilization. Public health practitioners play a vital role in ensuring that laboratories are technically capable and strategically aligned with response operations. This includes assessing geographic distribution, sample transport logistics, surge capacity, and interoperability with healthcare and public-health informatics systems.
Formal pre-incident coordination agreements—such as memoranda of understanding or mutual aid compacts—can help clarify roles, responsibilities, and data-sharing expectations across institutions. These are especially important when containment laboratories are operated by academic, private, or federal entities that may not naturally align with local response frameworks. In today’s complex threat environment, the ability to move from detection to action depends not just on infrastructure, but on intentional, sustained integration between laboratory science and first response.
Advancing System Readiness Through Collaboration
The expanding footprint of high-containment laboratories underscores a growing need for deeper collaboration between laboratory scientists at these institutions and both public health and emergency management professionals. As the boundaries between human, animal, and environmental health threats continue to blur, siloed preparedness is no longer viable. The full public health value of BSL-3 and BSL-4 laboratories will only be realized when they are embedded into the operational core of response systems and treated as trusted partners. Achieving this requires more than technical interoperability; it demands shared doctrine, coordinated communication channels, and mutual understanding of each stakeholder’s roles and capabilities. By investing in these cross-disciplinary relationships now—well before the next crisis emerges—leaders can build a more agile, anticipatory, and resilient health security architecture, capable of protecting lives, stabilizing systems, and preserving trust in the face of future biological threats.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not represent the views or positions of their respective institutions.
Joshua Dise
Joshua Dise is an interdisciplinary national security and emergency management professional with experience in both operational and analytical roles. His work addresses complex and interconnected risks, including industrial hazards, transboundary diseases, cybersecurity, and systemic threats to critical infrastructure. He currently serves as a systems analyst at Sandia National Laboratories, where he provides decision support on ill-defined, multi-domain national security challenges using a broad range of technical skills and expertise. Prior to this, he served as a lead technical analyst and emergency planner at Sandia, where he was responsible for delivering a variety of hazard analyses and consequence assessment products. His research interests include environmental hazard response, biosecurity, agricultural and public health preparedness, natural resource management and security, and the convergence of digital and physical infrastructure risks. Joshua holds advanced degrees in emergency management and natural resources and is currently a Ph.D. student at Oklahoma State University, studying fire and emergency management administration. He is also an alumnus of the National Preparedness and Leadership Initiative at Harvard University.
Anthony Falzarano
Anthony Falzarano is a subject matter expert in biodefense and global health security. In the Systems Analysis group at Sandia National Laboratories, he supports government sponsors by providing decision support across a range of threats to human, animal, and environmental health. His applied experience includes strengthening health systems both in the U.S. and internationally. He played a key role in the Ohio Department of Health’s COVID-19 response, supported the U.S. State Department’s Cooperative Threat Reduction portfolio, and has advised private and nongovernmental organization partners in numerous health emergency responses. Previously, Anthony contributed thought leadership and policy research on chemical, biological, nuclear, and cyber risks at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Center for Global Security Research and the Wilson Center. His research focuses on medical readiness for emerging health threats, the intersection of climate change and infectious disease with national security and foreign policy, and CBRN surveillance and countermeasure development. He is currently a medical student at Ohio University’s Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine and holds an M.S. in biodefense from George Mason University.
