13 January 2024 , 11:59
393
0
World leaders are to discuss preparation for the next pandemic at a major Davos summit next week.
Officials from across the globe will be heading to the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Switzerland - with the risk posed by what's known as 'Disease X' one of the key items on the agenda.
It comes after warnings from experts that a hypothetical new pandemic could kill 20 times more people than the recent coronavirus outbreak. It is hoped that with the correct research framework in place and enough knowledge in place on a global level, a future pandemic could be eliminated in just 100 days.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned of a potential Disease X since 2017, a term indicating an unknown pathogen that could cause a serious international epidemic. Speaking to the WEF on its Radio Davos podcast last year, author Kate Kelland said that extensive research into already-known families of viruses would help humanity prepare and create a vaccine quickly for the the next outbreak.
She said: "Because scientists were working for decades or more on Sars vaccines and also on Mers vaccine, they found out some very key pieces of information about coronaviruses. If we do that kind of homework on every one of the 25 or so viral families that we already know have the potential to cause disease in humans … then we can actually gain a lot of knowledge ahead of time about something that doesn't exist yet."
WHO warns we must prepare for bird flu pandemic if mammal strain jumps to humans
Ms Kelland added that an example of this preparedness had already been seen with monkeypox, which already had a vaccine in place before the outbreak in 2022 because it was from the same family as smallpox. Dame Kate Bingham, who was on the UK’s vaccine panel in 2020, has also previously warned that Disease X could be capable of producing 20 times as many fatalities as Covid-19 - about 50 million fatalities.
Public speakers at the 'Preparing for Disease X' event next Wednesday include Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the WHO, Brazilian Minister of Health Nisia Trindade Lima, and Michel Demaré, chair of the board at AstraZeneca.
In their first post-pandemic meeting held in November 2022, the WHO brought over 300 scientists to consider which of over 25 virus families and bacteria could potentially create another pandemic. The list the team came up with included: the Ebola virus, the Marburg virus disease, Covid-19, SARS, and the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV). Others included lassa fever, nipah and henipaviral diseases, zift Valley fever, and zika - as well as the unknown pathogen that would cause "Disease X".