Prevention of high-risk human–wildlife and human–human interactions, which can accelerate the occurrence of future outbreaks, epidemics or pandemics, requires global efforts. These efforts should focus on reducing the risk of contact with wildlife, pre-outbreak surveillance of wildlife and high-risk people, improvement of wildlife trade biosafety, and learning lessons from the previous attacks. International collaborations, building on the experiences learnt during facing the attacks by severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus (SAR-CoV), Middle East respiratory syndrome-coronavirus (MERS-CoV) and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), will accelerate implementation of novel anti-viral prevention and control measures to avoid occurrence of such devastating viral outbreaks, epidemics and pandemics in the future.