Nipah virus 75 times more deadly than Covid could be the next pandemic

Experts told The Sun Online how a number of emerging diseases could cause another global outbreak – and this time it could be “The Big One.”

The fruit bat-borne virus Nipah is an excellent candidate for serious concern, they fear.

Severe brain swelling, seizures and vomiting are just some of the symptoms of this very powerful disease – first discovered in Malaysia in 1999.

Outbreaks in South and Southeast Asia show that the virus is extraordinarily deadly, with a death rate between 40 and 75 percent.

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The death rate from COVID-19 is around 1 percent, according to Imperial College, so a Nipah pandemic would kill many more people.

It has also been listed by the World Health Organization (WHO) as one of the 16 priority pathogens for research and development due to its potential to cause an epidemic.

And chillingly, Nipah is just one of 260 known viruses with epidemic potential.

The virus is such a concern because of its long incubation period of up to 45 days, which means that humans can spread for more than a month before getting sick, and its ability to cross species.

Nipah also has an exceptionally high mutation rate and fears that a strain better adapted to human infections could spread rapidly across the well-connected countries of Southeast Asia.

And while COVID-19 has devastated the world, killing nearly 2.5 million people, it has already been warned that the next pandemic could be much worse.

Dr. Melanie Saville, director of vaccine research and development at CEPI, has warned that the world must be prepared for the next “big one.”

Humans clashing with nature as populations grow and habitats push back is believed to be a major cause of new diseases – which is exactly what happened to Nipah when it first infected pig farmers in Malaysia.

Dr. Rebecca Dutch, chair of the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry at the University of Kentucky and a world leader in the study of viruses, said that while there are currently no Nipah outbreaks in the world, they occur periodically and it is ‘highly likely’ that we will see more.

“Nipah is one of the viruses that could definitely be the cause of another pandemic. Several things about Nipah are very concerning, ”said Dr. Dutch.

“Many other viruses in that family (such as measles) spread well between humans, so there is concern that a Nipah variant with increased transmission could develop.

“The mortality rate for this virus is between 45% and 75% depending on the outbreak, so this is much higher than COVID-19. Nipah has been shown to be transmitted through food, as well as through contact with human or animal excretions.

“The incubation period for Nipah can be quite long, and it may be unclear whether transmission can occur during this time.”

In addition to fruit bats, pigs have contracted the disease from eating infected mangoes and are known to transmit the disease to humans.

More than a million pigs believed to be infected with the Nipah virus were slaughtered in Malaysia to prevent transmission to humans.

Dr. Jonathan Epstein, vice president for science and outreach at the EcoHealth Alliance, explained how they track the Nipah virus and is concerned about its potential.

“We know very little about the genetic variation of Nipah-related viruses in bats, and what we don’t want is for a species to emerge that is more transmissible among humans,” said Dr. Epstein.

“So far, Nipah is spread through close contact with an infected person, especially someone with respiratory illness, through droplets, and we generally don’t see major chains of transmission.

“However, if there is ample opportunity to spread from bats to humans and to humans, a species could emerge that is better adapted to spread among humans.

“This is a zoonotic virus knocking on the door, and we really need to work now to understand where human cases occur, and try to reduce the chances of a spillover so that it never has a chance to adapt to the man.”

THE BIG’

And Dr. Saville warned that we must be ready for the next “big one,” wherever it comes from.

“Most importantly, we shouldn’t just look at Nipah,” she said.

“We know a future pandemic is inevitable, and there are many other emerging infectious diseases that are recognized to have pandemic potential.

“This includes known disease threats, such as the flu, as well as new or as yet unidentified pathogens known as ‘Disease X’.

“With environmental changes such as climate change, habitat destruction and human encroachment on previously isolated areas, human interactions have created a fertile space for viruses to jump between species and so we need to be prepared for the next ‘big’.”

Dr. Saville added that CEPI is in the process of producing a library of prototype vaccines that can fight all coronaviruses at once.

She added that they would build on what they learned from COVID-19 to try to eliminate the risk of a future pandemic.

Executive Director of the Access to Medicine Foundation, Jayasree K Iyer, also called superbugs a major pandemic risk.

She said: “Antibiotic resistance is already causing more than 700,000 deaths a year, including more than 200,000 infant deaths.

“Antibiotics are used to treat almost all cases of severe COVID-19, causing an increasing number of bacteria to become resistant to these antibiotics.”

Ms. Iyer and experts in the field are concerned that pharmaceutical companies are not doing enough to make vaccines in time for the next pandemic.

For example, there are no drugs or vaccines specific to the Nipah virus.

But the next pandemic may well come from a pathogen that we are currently unknown.

The unknown outbreak, known as Disease X, could cause an outbreak worse than the Black Death if more is not done to combat zoonotic diseases.

Of the 1.67 million unknown viruses on the planet, 827,000 could infect humans with animals, according to the EcoHealth Alliance.

Southeast Asia, South and Central Africa, areas around the Amazon, and Eastern Australia were all identified as the areas with the highest risk of new diseases in a study published in Nature Communications.

Environmental writer John Vidal, who is working on a book revealing the links between nature and disease, predicted that the world will face another pandemic on the scale of the Black Death.

Given the popularity of air travel and global trade, a virus could rage around the world, unwittingly spread by asymptomatic airlines, “killing tens of millions of people in a matter of weeks before the borders could be closed,” he adds.

He said, “Humanity has changed its relationship with both wild and farm animals by destroying their habitats and displacing them together – and the process … is only accelerating.

“If we fail to recognize the seriousness of the situation, this current pandemic could only be a harbinger of something much more serious.”

WORLD’S WORST PANDEMY

These are the deadliest disease outbreaks in history – many times the death toll than Covid is currently causing.

•Black Death – Somewhere between 75 and 200 million people died – up to 60 percent of the entire population of Europe – when the plague ravaged the continent from 1346 to 1353.

It was most likely passed on to humans via fleas that fed on black rats on merchant ships in the Mediterranean before spreading across Europe and North Africa.

• Spanish flu – As the world tried to recover from the horror of the Great War in 1918, a disaster ensued that killed twice as many people as the conflict with the Spanish flu.

Somewhere between 17 million and 100 million people died during the pandemic that lasted until 1920 – but there is currently no consensus on the origin of the virus, although it apparently has avian genes.

• Plague of Justinian Supposedly the same bacteria responsible for the Black Death, the plague ravaged Europe and Western Asia, killing between 15 million and 100 million people in AD 541 and 542. Perished.

It is believed to have been spread by rats that also carry fleas – spread to the Byzantine Empire via grain ships coming from Egypt.

• HIV / AIDS pandemic – Still devastating parts of the world, an estimated 35 million people have been killed by the insidious virus since 1981.

It is believed to have jumped from primates to humans and may have been first spread by the bushmeat trade.

• The third plague – The bubonic plague struck again in China in 1855, from where it spread and killed up to 15 million people.

The WHO estimated that the bacteria would flourish until 1960 – with the end of the pandemic only then, and they continue to monitor every outbreak of the plague closely.

DISEASES ON THE HAZARD LIST OF WHO

The World Health Organization (WHO) has an elimination of priority pathogens for research due to the threat of a widespread epidemic – with these are some of the main concerns:

Ebola – Six African countries have been put on alert by the WHO after Guinea declared it was suffering from a new Ebola epidemic. The disease that killed more than 11,000 people in the region. It causes fever, headache, muscle pain, and bleeding from the ears, eyes, nose, or mouth.

• SARS – The virus is believed to have first emerged from bats in China, such as COVID-19, and caused an epidemic in 2002 to 2004 that killed 774 people. SARS is an airborne virus and can spread through small droplets of saliva in the same way as COVID-19 and flu.

• MERS – An insect believed to have spread from bats to camels to people in the Middle East. It is not as contagious as SARS or COVID, but has a mortality rate of about 35%.

• Rift Valley Fever – A zoonotic disease that is mainly transmitted to humans through contaminated animal blood and mosquitoes. The most extreme forms of the virus can cause blindness, jaundice, vomiting blood and death.

This article originally appeared on The Sun and is reproduced with permission