British health leaders have issued a grim warning about 24 fatal viruses that can activate the following 'disease X' – a term that is often used to describe the perpetrator behind the next pandemic.
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has limited the deadliest diseases to four pathogens that are currently circulating – including a measles -like virus that could be 'considerably more dangerous than Covid'.
A leading scientist has warned that the list contains viruses that are 'impossible to control by even the strictest lockdown'.
That is the concern that the government has announced the launch of a reference document that will be constantly updated, to keep scientists and researchers informed of the latest threats.
An alarming pathogen is that of the Picornaviridae family, which causes polio-like diseases.
An example is a virus called acute weak myelitis (AFM), a rare condition that causes muscle weakness and paralysis.
A 15-year-old boy from Rochdale was left paralyzed in January after AFM, the BBC reported.
Health leaders have also warned that viruses of the Paramyxoviridae family can also have pandemic potential.
UK data of the VK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) shows that in 2023 1,603 there were suspected measles stores in England and Wales.
These include measles, mumps and some airway infections, as well as the nipah virus – that can spread from bats or pigs to people – and causes brain swelling and death.
Large outbreaks of measles have already been reported all over the world as the vaccination rates decrease.
Last year 2,911 measles affairs were confirmed in England – the highest number registered since 2012.
Complications of the deadly disease, which usually influence children, can include pneumonia, eye inflammation and loss of eyesight, as well as brain inflammation, which leads to epileptic seizures, hearing loss and brain damage.
Other viruses who are 'aware' by officials are coronaviruses such as COVID-19 and Mers, who has killed more than 900 so far – usually in the middle.
Alarming is also the threat of bird flu – part of the Orthomyxoviridae family of pathogens.
The virus, which jumps between species, has already been detected in a British farmer who is known to have had contact with infected birds.
In the meantime, the disease claimed his first human victim in the US in January, killing a 65-year-old with underlying health problems exposed to wild birds.
Bird flu was detected yesterday in a sheep in Noord -Engand – the first known case of its kind in the world.
2018: Congolese officials and the officials of the World Health Organization wear protective suits while participating in training against the Ebola virus near the city of Beni in the province of Noord -Kivu of the Democratic Republic Congo
Mark Woolhouse, professor of infectious diseases at the University of Edinburgh, told The Mirror that scientists are most concerned about a measles-type virus.
“A new measles -like virus would pose a much worse threat than Covid,” he said.
“Such a virus would have a much higher R number than the original variants of Covid – making it impossible to check through even the strictest lockdown.”
An R number describes the number of people with whom an infected person will on average pass on a virus.
“This is the type of pandemic where public health authorities around the world are most concerned about,” he added.
It has been shown that cases of measles wipe away the memory of our immune system, which means that a large outbreak could see a national increase in other infections.
A Harvard Medical School study from 2019 showed that measles up up to 75 percent of the antibodies that protected against the viruses or bacteria for which a child was previously immune.
At the end of January a patient in the Midlands was diagnosed with H5N1 after 'close and long -term contact with a large number of infected birds'
Professor Isabel Oliver, Chief Scientific Officer for UKHSA, said that the virus list is a tool to emphasize how research can be the target to increase British readiness against health threats.
'We use the tool as part of our conversations with the scientific community, to ensure that investments are aimed at where it can have the biggest impact.
“We hope that this will help to speed up the development of vaccine and diagnostics where the most needs, to ensure that we are fully prepared in our fight against potentially deadly pathogens.”
In September 2019, the now degraded Public Health England also reported that increasing antibiotic resistance of bacteria could also become a potential disease X.
