The COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated how unprepared the world and NATO were to handle a pandemic of this scale, even after the improvements made in civil and military biological defence and consequence management based on previous pandemics, most recently influenza A(H1N11). The security and resilience of NATO depends substantially on NATO and its member states being prepared for future pandemics.
 
The Joint CBRN Defence Centre of Excellence (JCBRND Defence COE) initiated a comprehensive report to address CBRN defence capabilities within the biological defence domain based on COVID-19 observations, lessons identified, and lessons learned. The JCBRN Defence COE intends to provide CBRN expertise and experience to the benefit of the Alliance in prevention, protection, and recovery. In addition, the JCBRN Defence COE intends to continue to provide operations support to NATO's current and future crisis efforts; especially with our CBRN reachback, modelling and simulation, and strategic-level and operational-level planning.

The year 2020 just passed, and we started the new year 2021 with optimism and great expectations. In 2020, we faced many challenges, but it also provided us opportunities.

On one hand, we had to change how we operated, and we were encouraged to use new technologies that would have otherwise taken us years to implement. We implemented and enhanced many new capabilities such as video teleconference, including secure VTC, collaborative tools, e-learning, knowledge management, information sharing and many others.