A disease with brain swelling 75 times more deadly than coronavirus could move to become the next pandemic to kill millions, scientists have warned.
Experts told Sun Online that a number of emerging diseases could trigger another global outbreak – and this time it could be “The Big One”.
It is feared that the Nipah virus, carried by bats, is a prime candidate for serious concerns.
Severe swelling of the brain, seizures and vomiting are just some of the symptoms of this extremely strong disease – which was first discovered in 1999 in Malaysia.
Outbreaks in South and Southeast Asia show that the virus is extremely deadly, with a mortality rate of 40 to 75%.
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The COVID-19 mortality rate is about 1%, according to Imperial College, so a pandemic in Nipah would kill many more people.
It has also been named by the World Health Organization (WHO) as one of the 16 priority pathogens for research and development due to its potential to trigger an epidemic.
And awfully, Nipah is just one of 260 known viruses with epidemic potential.
The virus is such a concern due to its long incubation period of up to 45 days, which means that humans could spread for more than a month before becoming ill and its ability to cross between species.
Nipah also has an exceptional mutation rate and fears that a strain better adapted to human infections could spread rapidly to well-interconnected countries in Southeast Asia.
And while COVID-19 has devastated the world, killing nearly 2.5 million people, it has already been warned that the next pandemic could be much worse.
Dr. Melanie Saville, director of vaccine research and development at CEPI, warned that the world must be prepared for the next “big”.
People who face nature as populations expand and habitats are pushed back is considered to be a major factor in new diseases – and this is exactly what happened to Nipah when it first infected pig farmers in Malaysia.
Dr. Rebecca Dutch, chair of the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry at the University of Kentucky and a world leader in the study of viruses, said that although there are no current outbreaks of Nipah in the world, they occur regularly and are “extremely likely” to see more.
“Nipah is one of the viruses that could absolutely be the cause of a new pandemic. More about Nipah is very worrying, “said Dr. Dutch.
“Many other viruses in that family (such as measles) transmit well between people, so there is concern that a high-transmission Nipah variant may occur.
“The mortality rate for this virus is between 45% and 75%, depending on the outbreak – so this is much higher than COVID-19. Nipah has been shown to transmit through food as well as through contact with human or animal excretions.
“The incubation period for Nipah can be quite long and it is not clear whether the transmission can take place during this time.”
In addition to fruit bats, pigs caught the disease by eating infected mangoes and are known to transmit the disease to humans.
More than a million pigs believed to be infected with the Nipah virus have been slaughtered in Malaysia to prevent its transfer to humans.
Dr. Jonathan Epstein, vice president for science and information at the EcoHealth Alliance, explained how they are tracking the Nipah virus and are worried about its potential.
“We know very little about the genetic variety of Nipah-related viruses in bats, and what we don’t want to happen is a strain that is more transmissible to humans,” said Dr. Epstein.
“Until now, Nipah is widespread among close contacts with an infected person, especially with someone with respiratory diseases through drops and, in general, we do not see large chains of transmission.
“However, with enough opportunity to spread from bats to humans and among humans, a strain could emerge that is better suited to spread among humans.
“This is a zoonotic virus knocking on the door and we really need to work now to understand where human cases occur and to try to reduce the opportunities for a spillover so that it never has a chance to adapt to humans. ”
THE GREAT’
And Dr. Saville warned that we must be prepared for the next “sea,” wherever it comes from.
“Most importantly, we shouldn’t just look at Nipah,” she said.
“We know that a future pandemic is inevitable and there are many other emerging infectious diseases that are recognized as having pandemic potential.
This includes known threats of the disease, such as the flu, as well as new or newly identified pathogens, known as “Disease X”.
“With environmental changes, such as climate change, habitat destruction and the penetration of humans into previously isolated areas, human interactions have created a fertile space for viruses to jump between species and therefore we must be prepared for the next” big “.”
Dr. Saville added that CEPI aims to produce a library of vaccine prototypes that could target all coronaviruses simultaneously.
She added that they will build on what they have learned from COVID-19 to try to eliminate the risk of a future pandemic.
The executive director of the Access to Medicine Foundation, Jayasree K Iyer, also called superbugs a high risk of a pandemic.
She said: “Antibiotic resistance already causes more than 700,000 deaths each year, including more than 200,000 deaths in infants.
“Antibiotics are used to treat severe COVID-19 in almost all cases, leading to an increasing number of bacteria becoming resistant to these antibiotics.”
Ms Iyer and experts in the field are concerned that pharmaceutical companies are not doing enough to create vaccines in time for the next pandemic.
For example, there are no drugs or vaccines specific to the Nipah virus.
But the next pandemic could come from a pathogen currently unknown to us.
The unknown outbreak, known as Disease X, could trigger a worse outbreak than the Black Death if more is not done to control zoonotic diseases.
Of the 1.67 million unknown viruses on the planet, up to 827,000 of them could have the ability to infect humans from animals, according to the EcoHealth Alliance.
Southeast Asia, South and Central Africa, the areas around the Amazon and eastern Australia were all identified as the areas most at risk for new diseases in a study published in Nature Communications.
Environmental writer John Vidal, who is working on a book that reveals the links between nature and disease, predicted that the world is facing a new Black Death-scale pandemic.
Given the popularity of air travel and global trade, a virus could spread around the world, unknowingly spreading by asymptomatic carriers, “in a matter of weeks, killing tens of millions of people before borders can be closed. He adds.
He said: “Mankind has changed its relationship with both wild and farmed animals, destroying their habitats and crowding them – and the process … is just accelerating.
“If we fail to assess the gravity of the situation, this current pandemic could only be a precursor to something even more serious.”
THE WORLD’S MOST PANDEMIC
These are the deadliest outbreaks of disease in history – often more dead than Covid.
•Black Death – Somewhere between 75 and 200 million people lost their lives – up to 60% of the entire population of Europe – when the plague devastated the continent between 1346 and 1353.
It was most likely transmitted to humans by fleas that fed on black rats on merchant ships in the Mediterranean before spreading to Europe and North Africa.
• Spanish flu – While the world was trying to recover from the horror of the Great War in 1918, a disaster that killed twice as many people as the conflict occurred with the Spanish flu.
Somewhere between 17 million and 100 million people died during the pandemic that lasted until 1920 – but there is currently no consensus on the origin of the virus, although it appears to have avian genes.
• Justinian’s plague – Considered to be the same bacterium responsible for the Black Death, the plague devastated Europe and West Asia, killing between 15 and 100 million people in 541 and 542 AD.
It is believed to have been spread by flea-bearing rats – spreading to the Byzantine Empire through grain vessels arriving from Egypt.
• HIV / AIDS pandemic – Still devastating parts of the world, about 35 million people have been killed by the insidious virus since 1981.
It is believed to have jumped from primates to humans and was potentially spread for the first time by the bushmeat trade.
• The third wound – The bubonic plague struck China again in 1855 from where it spread and killed up to 15 million people.
The WHO estimated that the bacteria were in progress until 1960 – only then did the pandemic end and continue to closely monitor possible outbreaks of plague.
DISEASES ON THE WHOLE HAZARD
The World Health Organization (WHO) has a number of priority pathogens for research due to the threat posed by a widespread epidemic – these are some of the biggest concerns:
•Ebola – Six African nations have been alerted by the WHO after Guinea said it was suffering from another Ebola epidemic. The disease has killed more than 11,000 people in the region. This leads to fever, headache, muscle aches and bleeding in the ears, eyes, nose or mouth.
• SARS – The virus is believed to have first appeared in Chinese bats, such as COVID-19, triggering an epidemic in 2002 to 2004 that killed 774 people. SARS is an airborne virus and can be spread by small drops of saliva similar to COVID-19 and the flu.
• MERS – A bug believed to have spread from bats to camels to humans in the Middle East. It is not as infectious as SARS or COVID, but has a fatality rate of about 35%.
• Rift Valley fever – A zoonotic disease that is transmitted mainly to humans through the blood and mosquitoes of infected animals. The most extreme forms of the virus can cause blindness, jaundice, vomiting and death.
This article originally appeared on The Sun and was reproduced with permission