In February 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) introduced the term ‘Disease X’ on its list of priority diseases. It’s a placeholder name used to represent a possible, unknown pathogen that could trigger an epidemic in the future.
Health experts are claiming that future pandemics can be more lethal than COVID-19 and could claim over 50 million lives.
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Dame Kate Bingham’s Warning-
Dame Kate Bingham, who chaired the UK’s Vaccine Taskforce, gave a serious warning about the impacts of disease X. She stressed that while COVID-19 was serious, the world had been lucky it wasn’t more deadly and she warned that the next pandemic might be much more dangerous.
She said that Disease X could be over seven times as deadly as COVID-19. She highlighted, “Many viruses have the potential to trigger such a pandemic due to their ability to replicate and mutate rapidly.”
She mentioned, “Scientists are diligently monitoring 25 virus families, each containing thousands of individual viruses, some of which have the potential to mutate into severe pandemics.”
UK’s Efforts Towards the Vaccine-
UK scientists have launched efforts to develop a vaccine for this unknown yet potentially lethal pathogen. Over 200 scientists are working on this research, which is taking place at the highly secure Porton Down laboratory complex in Wiltshire.
Their primary focus is on viruses that originally infect animals but could potentially jump to humans and quickly spread globally. Some of the viruses they are closely examining include bird flu, monkeypox, and hantavirus, which are transmitted by rodents.