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VIVA – Recently, experts have warned that the signs of a major outbreak are already visible and the disease could be life threatening at any time. Professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, Prof Mark Woolhouse, believes that 'Disease X' is imminent in humans.
The threat of an unknown virus that can transmit to humans and potentially cause a spread out epidemic is known as Disease ‘X’ by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Last year, they warned that the next pandemic could reach the scale of the Black Death, which killed an estimated 75 million people.
It is because polio has been found in sewage treatment works in London and there is some evidence of transmission in a small number of people.
UK Health Security Service (UKHSA) experts believe a traveler may have been from Pakistan, Afghanistan or Nigeria passing the virus through their feces after being inoculated with oral polio. But the virus has spread to other people after mutating, with the same strain repeatedly detected in waste samples since May 2022.
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- U-Report
Not only that, the UK has also seen cases of bird flu, Lassa fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever and monkeypox this year. Prof Mark Woolhouse believes this infection is a sign of a health condition later.
"There's a name for what we're seeing right now in the UK and elsewhere, it's called chatter use to describe small events that might signal something bigger," Prof Woolhouse said in The Sun, Wednesday 29 June 2022.
After the deadly COVID-19 pandemic fades, scientists believe the next pandemic may be caused by a zoonotic disease, when infection passed from animals to humans.
According to the EcoHealth Alliance, of the 1.67 million unknown viruses on the planet, up to 827,000 of them can infect humans from animals.
In a study published by Nature Communications, Southeast Asia, South and Central Africa, the area around the Amazon, and eastern Australia are all identified as areas with the highest risk for the new disease.
As human populations explode and move further into animal habitats, the risk of transmitting disease to humans increases and kills millions before the world can take action.
"The beginning of the 21st century has been the perfect storm for infectious diseases to emerge, and all of them lead to the possibility of more and more outbreaks. All triggers for outbreaks are actually getting worse, not better from time to time," he said.
