What is 'disease X' as WHO calls for global pandemic treaty for 'common enemy'
The world's leading health authority has called on global leaders to sign a pandemic treaty to help nations prepare for "Disease X" amid the threat of new major health pandemics
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday, Tedros Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organisation (WHO), urged countries to sign on to its pandemic treaty by May in order to fight the "common enemy". Disease X is a hypothetical "placeholder" virus that has not yet been formed, but scientists say it could be 20 times deadlier than COVID-19.
Disease X was added to the WHO’s short list of pathogens for research in 2017 that could cause a "serious international epidemic". And while Ghebreyesus said that COVID-19 was the first Disease X, he stressed the importance of preparation for another global health pandemic.
He said: "There are things that are unknown that may happen, and anything happening is a matter of when, not if, so we need to have a placeholder for that, for the diseases we don’t know. We lost many people [during COVID] because we couldn’t manage them. They could have been saved, but there was no space. There was not enough oxygen. So how can you have a system that can expand when the need comes?"
WHO chief Tedros Ghebreyesus stressed the importance of preparation for another global health pandemic (World Health Organization (WHO)/)"The pandemic agreement can bring all the experience, all the challenges that we have faced and all the solutions into one," Ghebreyesus said. "That agreement can help us to prepare for the future in a better way This is a common global interest, and very narrow national interests should not come into the way." Here we explain what Disease X is and how we may best prepare for another global pandemic.
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What exactly is Disease X?
Disease X is a label that the WHO is using to refer to currently unknown infectious conditions that may be capable of causing an epidemic or a pandemic. The term, which was first coined in 2017, can be used to mean a newly discovered pathogen or any known pathogen with newly acquired pandemic potential. Covid-19 was the first Disease X but the organisation is warning there could be another at some point in the future.
What might the next Disease X be?
The coronaviruses, a large group of viruses, were long seen as a prime contender for producing a new pandemic, even before the covid-19 outbreak. That is because the novel coronavirus wasn’t the first dangerous pathogen from this group. In 2002, a different coronavirus started spreading in China. It caused a form of pneumonia called SARS that killed around 1 in 10 of those it infected, before it was stopped by strict infection control measures. Another, even deadlier coronavirus called MERS occasionally breaks out, causing a pneumonia that kills 1 in 3 of those infected.
However, recent work suggests SARS and MERS would have a harder time triggering a fresh pandemic because almost everyone in the world now has antibodies to the virus that causes covid-19 and these seem to give partial protection against most other pathogens in the coronavirus family.
The WHO pandemic treaty was created to help nations prepare for 'Disease X' amid the threat of new major health pandemics (Getty Images/Science Photo Library RF)How can we stop Disease X in the future?
The Covid-19 pandemic may have actually made it easier to stop any future Disease X. The coronavirus outbreak has actually accelerated the development of novel vaccines - including those that can be quickly reused and updated to target new pathogens. For example it led to the advent of vaccines based on mRNA. This formula contained a short piece of genetic material that made the body’s immune cells produce the coronavirus “spike” protein – but it could be updated to make cells churn out a different protein - by simply rewriting the mRNA sequence.
What else can we do to fight Disease X?
The WHO is warning how countries need to develop more accurate early warning systems for new diseases - and stressed how health services need to become more resilient to unexpected surges in demand. Tedros said: “When hospitals were stretched beyond their capacity [with Covid], we lost many people because we could not manage them. There was not enough space, there was not enough oxygen.”
To prevent the same thing from happening when Disease X strikes, the WHO chief says health services must be able to expand their capacity quickly - and on demand. And thanks to Covid, Governments can go some way into making those preparations without knowing exactly what Disease X will be. “Disease X is a placeholder. Whatever the disease is, you can prepare for it," he says.
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