Epidemics around the world have been largely caused by viruses spreading from wild animals to humans, basically in tropical hotspots where varying numbers of animals come into contact with humans, the researchers report.
To avoid the next pandemic, the world’s richest countries will need to invest in disease surveillance and health care that can warn in advance of emerging threats, the researchers explained.
“People say we want better vaccines and better drugs to counter the emergence of the next unknown virus,” said report co-author Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, a foreign nonprofit. “What we say is a little different. We want to go beyond that. We want to start preventing pandemics. We will have to review to disrupt them, as we would with any other threat, such as terrorism. “
The coalition of 14 researchers met in 2021 as an independent working group on COVID-19 and pandemics: origins, prevention, and response, and set out to conduct an in-depth review of primary viral outbreaks for more than half a century.
They found that new virus outbreaks “tend to originate in countries with expanding populations and are discovered in tropical regions of the world,” adding Southeast Asia, Africa and South America, Daszak said.
Because of global warming and human invasion, not only is a pandemic more likely to occur, but it’s also more likely to be more devastating than COVID-19, said lead researcher Linda Saif, a virologist and immunologist at Ohio State University’s Center for Food Animal Health. .
COVID-19 is one of the most transmissible emerging viruses ever found, Saif said, but humanity is fortunate because it’s not the killer it could have been just for those infected.
For comparison, the SARS coronavirus that preceded COVID-19 had a 50 percent death rate for others 60 and older, Saif noted. 90% of the other people it infects.
Stopping pandemics in their tracks
“It instills a sense of urgency to be better prepared,” Saif said.
A triple technique is needed to stumble upon viruses that can pass from animals to humans, and prepare for or prevent them, the researchers recommended.
First comes “smart surveillance” — public fitness officials and fitness personnel stationed at those locations and tasked with tracking hotspots “where humans have close contact with animals and where spills are likely to occur,” Saif said.
The live animal markets operating in those spaces are a prime example of ongoing risk, Saif added, noting that COVID-19 emerged from the Hunan seafood market in Wuhan, China.
“You have a lot of other species mixed in. All of those species are occasionally in cages of each other, so urine and feces can spread, and this can be the point of transmission of consequences between species,” Saif explained. Then the humans who kill those animals in the market can come into contact with the tissue and blood of the animals, and then it’s imaginable that we have transmission of those resources to humans. “
Health workers deserve to screen animals and humans at those hotspots for symptoms of worrisome viral illnesses, as well as humans in high-risk occupations that occasionally put them in close contact with wild animals, Daszak said.
Surveillance may also include tracking new types of diseases in hospitals, Saif said, and testing sewage and manure wells for new viruses.
“We can get a review of the supply of viruses and dominant viruses and how they evolve over time,” he suggested. Our purpose is to prevent them at the original source, if possible, so that they do not spread further and cause an epidemic or pandemic. “
This wise vigilance would count the component moment of prevention: pandemic preparedness.
Developed countries will have to get involved
Researchers can use surveillance to detect viruses of concern and prepare countermeasures, according to Saif.
“We can design and produce broad-spectrum diagnostics, vaccines and therapeutics, and we can make sure they are effective against a wide diversity of viruses and variants if an initial outbreak occurs,” he said.
The third component is the threat in those spaces through the conversion of human behaviors that cause that threat, experts said.
“Human activities that adjust the environment and bring humans and wildlife closer together will drive the rise of emerging infectious diseases,” Saif said. , increased urbanization and climate change. “
Comprehensive to counter those drivers will be essential, as well as movements at the local level.
For example, Saif said new regulations requiring safer handling of animals in open markets are possible.
“If we can’t close those markets, it’s very important to put in place regulations with sanctions that ensure practices that we know will lessen the threat of overflow,” Saif said.
Experts are confident that rich countries that can finance those activities will participate, especially since COVID-19 has opened everyone’s eyes to the economic devastation that a pandemic can cause.
“The burden of pandemics is increasing and not increasing. It is developing exponentially. It’s getting dramatically worse from decade to decade,” Daszak said.
“If you look at the cost-benefit analysis, if we spend $100 billion, we get a 100 to 1 return on investment to prevent pandemics. So the return is very high, especially if you know that the richest countries are regularly not the places where pandemics start, but once they get here, we are the ones who suffer the biggest economic hit every time,” he added.
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