The flu becomes a threat again, scientists are raising the alarm about what they currently only call Disease X. This was reported by The Guardian. According to leading scholars, influenza is the pathogen most likely to trigger a new pandemic in the near future.
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Disease X
Influenza which, having faded into the background in recent years, has always claimed deaths and serious illnesses. An international survey, which will be published next weekend, according to The Gurdian «will reveal that 57% of senior disease experts now think that a strain of influenza virus will be the cause of the next global epidemic of deadly infectious diseases». The belief that influenza is the world’s greatest pandemic threat is based on long-term research showing that it is constantly evolving and mutating, said Jon Salmanton-García of the University of Cologne, who led the study. «The flu appears every winter – he explains – We could describe these epidemics as small pandemics. They are more or less controlled because the different strains that cause them are not virulent enough, but this will not necessarily be the case forever.” The survey involved 187 senior scientists and will be disseminated at the European Society for Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID) congress in Barcelona next weekend.
What the experts say
According to 21% of experts who took part in the study, the next most likely cause of a pandemic, after the flu, will probably be a virus – nicknamed Disease X – still unknown to science. Scientists believe that «the next pandemic will be caused by an as yet unidentified microorganism that appears out of nowhere, just as the Sars-CoV-2 virus, the cause of Covid-19, did when it began infecting humans in 2019». In fact, some scholars still believe that Sars-CoV-2 remains a threat, with 15% of scientists interviewed in the study considering it the most likely cause of a pandemic in the near future. Other deadly microorganisms – such as Lassa, Nipah, Ebola and Zika viruses – were considered a serious global threat by only 1% to 2% of respondents. Nevertheless “LFlu has remained, by and large, the number one threat in terms of pandemic potential in the eyes of the vast majority of the world’s scientists»added Salmanton-García.
The WHO
Last week, the World Health Organization expressed concerns about the alarming spread of the H5N1 influenza strain that is causing millions of cases of bird flu around the world. This epidemic began in 2020 and has led to the death or killing of tens of millions of poultry and has also wiped out millions of wild birds. More recently, the virus has spread to mammal species, including domestic cattle which are now infected in 12 US states, further raising fears about the risks to humans. The more mammal species that become infected with the virus, the greater the chance it will evolve into a strain dangerous to humans, Daniel Goldhill, of the Royal Veterinary College at Hatfield, told the journal Nature last week. The appearance of the H5N1 virus in cattle was a surprise, added virologist Ed Hutchinson, from the University of Glasgow. Pigs can contract bird flu, but until recently cattle could not. They were infected with their own strains of the disease. So the appearance of the H5N1 virus in cows was a shock. «It means that the risk of the virus getting into more and more farm animals, and then from farm animals to humans, becomes higher and higher. The more the virus spreads, the greater the chance that it will mutate and spread to humans. Basically, we’re rolling the dice with this virus».
Avian flu
To date there is no indication that H5N1 is spreading among humans. But in hundreds of cases where humans have been infected through contact with animals over the past 20 years, the impact has been terrible. «The death rate is extraordinarily high because humans have no natural immunity to the virus», said Jeremy Farrar, chief scientist at the World Health Organization. The prospect of a flu pandemic is alarming, although scientists also point out that vaccines have already been developed against many strains, including H5N1. «If there were a bird flu pandemic, it would still be a huge logistical challenge to produce vaccines at the scale and speed that will be needed. However, we would be much further along that path than we were with Covid-19, when a vaccine had to be developed from scratch», Hutchinson said. But since the end of the Covid pandemic, some lessons about preventing the spread of disease have been forgotten, Salmanton-García said. «People went back to coughing into their hands and then shaking hands with other people. Mask wearing has disappeared. We are returning to our old bad habits. We might come to regret it».
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