According to Kate Bingham, a British healthcare specialist who was in charge of the UK’s Vaccine Taskforce from May to December 2020, Disease X – the name attributed to it by the World Health Organisation – could trigger a global pandemic deadlier than Covid-19. In an interview with Daily Mail, she likened its potential impact to that of the Spanish Flu which occurred between 1919 and 1920. The WHO states that Disease X could be a virus, a bacteria or a fungus of unknown origin without any established treatments.
Ms Bingham, worried, remarked, “To put it in perspective: the flu pandemic of 1918-19 caused 50 million deaths globally, twice the number of casualties from World War I. If something like that were to happen today, we would witness a comparable death toll due to the multiple viruses that exist already.”
She informed the Daily Mail that if the world wants to face the challenge of Disease X, there must be a comprehensive plan to rapid vaccine deployment.
The specialist pointed out that, while 25 distinct virus families have been identified, there could be more than a million unrecorded variants which may have the capacity to spread from one species to another.
Despite the loss of over 20 million lives due to Covid-19, it can be said that we had some fortune. The vast majority of those infected with the virus have managed to recover. Ms. Bingham stated that if one were to consider a theoretical Disease X, which had the transmissibility of measles and the fatality rate of Ebola, the result would be catastrophic. She went on to say that the disease would likely start replicating somewhere in the world, and it would only be a matter of time before someone fell ill.
According to reports, Ebola had a mortality rate of approximately 67 percent. Additionally, she noted that other illnesses such as bird flu and MERS took the lives of a sizable number of people. Therefore, it would not be wise to assume that the next pandemic would be easily managed.
Ms Bingham elucidated the reasons for the rise of pandemics.
Ms Bingham pointed out that the recent rise in contagions is the consequence of living in today’s world. She highlighted that this is due to two main factors: globalisation, which has led to an interconnectedness, and the concentration of people in urban areas, where they are often in close contact with each other.
Deforestation, modern agricultural practices, and the annihilation of wetlands are leading to viruses crossing over from one species to the next.
In May, the World Health Organization was the first to mention Disease X on its website.
The phrase “unknown human disease” was conveyed to imply the potential for a major global outbreak due to a virus not previously known to cause sickness in humans.
In 2018, the WHO started utilizing the term “Covid-19” and one year later, the virus had spread to many places around the globe.
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