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VIVA – A Russian scientist has stated that so-called zombie viruses, which were recently unearthed from Permafrost, are “absolutely harmless’ to a human organism.
“Perhaps someone wanted to create a pre-New Year sensation, but actually, finding similar viruses in permafrost is not uncommon for scientists,” Sergey Netesov told a Russian media outlet.
These viruses, which were earlier discovered in carcasses of mammoths, affect amoebas rather than humans.
He also referred to plenty of modern-day pathogens which pose a threat to people and which are yet to be explored by researchers, “I would not delve into antiquity and permafrost, preferring to focus on current human diseases,” the Russian virologist emphasized, pointing to the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Ilustrasi zombie
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He spoke several weeks after an international team of scientists led by microbiologist Jean-Marie Alempic from the French National Centre for Scientific Research discovered and reanimated an array of never-before-seen viruses from the Siberian permafrost.
A 48,500-year-old amoeba virus is one of 13 outlined by the scientists in their study, with nine of them thought to be tens of thousands of years old. The researchers argued that the viruses still had the potential to be infectious pathogens that are capable of posing a significant threat to people.
They warned that the situation would be much more disastrous in the case of a plant, animal, or human diseases caused by the revival of an ancient unknown virus.
“It is therefore legitimate to ponder the risk of ancient viral particles remaining infectious and getting back into circulation by the thawing of ancient permafrost layers,” explains Netesov.
Global warming has caused much of the permafrost, or permanently frozen soil that covers a quarter of the Northern Hemisphere, to permanently thaw and refreeze, “Part of this organic matter also consists of revived cellular microbes (prokaryotes, unicellular eukaryotes) as well as viruses that have remained dormant since prehistoric times," Netesov said.
