Health experts are turning their attention to preparing for the next possible global threat.
There is a 27.5% chance that a pandemic as deadly as Covid-19 could occur in the next decade, according to predictive health analytics firm As the virus emerges more frequently, rapid vaccine rollout is key to reducing fatalities.
Climate change, increased international travel, aging populations and the threat posed by zoonotic diseases contribute to the risk, according to London-based Airfinity Ltd. A fatal pandemic drops that to 8.1%, according to the firm’s modelling.
In a worst-case scenario, a bird flu type of virus that mutates to allow human-to-human transmission could kill more than 15,000 people in Britain in a single day, Airfinity said.
With the world now living with COVID-19, health experts are turning their attention to preparing for the next potential global threat. The past two decades have already seen three major coronaviruses that cause SARS, MERS and Covid-19, as well as the swine flu pandemic in 2009.
The rapid spread of the H5N1 bird flu strain is already a cause for concern. While very few people have been infected so far and there are no signs of a jump in human-to-human transmission, skyrocketing rates in birds and increasing incursions into mammals have raised concerns among scientists and governments that the virus may can mutate in ways that make it easier to spread.
Airfinity said that many high-risk pathogens, such as MERS and Zika, do not have approved vaccines or treatments, and current surveillance policies are unlikely to detect a new pandemic in a timely manner, which may limit pandemic preparedness measures. highlights the urgent need.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)