The fictitious virus might kill 20 times as many people than the Covid outbreak, the World Health Organization has warned.
A hypothetical, as-yet-unknown pathogen is represented by Disease X, which was added to the WHO’s list of nine priority diseases in 2018.
“Disease X represents the knowledge that a serious international epidemic could be caused by a pathogen currently unknown to cause human disease,” the United Nations declared.
Disease X is classified by the WHO with Covid, Ebola, Zika virus, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (Mers-CoV), Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars), and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever.
Discussions were held on Wednesday at the World Economic Forum’s “Preparing for Disease X” event in Davos, Switzerland.
Under the direction of Dr. Tedros Adhanom Gehreyesus, President of the WHO, a group examined fresh initiatives aimed at preparing healthcare systems for the “multiple challenges ahead”.
Although the virus that will start the next pandemic is still unknown, experts have been warning for decades that avian flu is the most likely culprit.
High levels of human flu increase the risk of co-infection with avian flu, which researchers believe is caused by the threat of recombination.
Some have long conjectured that Disease X could spread by zoonotic transmission, which is the process by which a bacteria or virus from animals spreads to humans.
Some have even gone so far as to suggest that a biological mutation, an accident, or a sudden, worldwide terrorist assault may be the source of Disease X and that it could spread quickly.
Disease X is “as infectious as measles with the fatality rate of Ebola,” according to scientists, and plans for an epidemic have already been made.
Its impact “is more of a probability rather than possibility,” according to the WHO.
Former UK vaccination taskforce chair Kate Bingham noted in a Mail Online article that we would consider the Covid epidemic to have been a “walk in the park” in the past.
“In a sense, we got lucky with Covid-19, even though it caused 20 million or more deaths worldwide,” she stated.
“The important thing to remember is that most individuals who contracted the virus were able to heal themselves.”
She went on to say: “Let me put it this way: the 1918–19 flu pandemic killed at least 50 million people worldwide, twice as many as were killed in World War I.”We would anticipate a comparable mortality toll from one of the numerous viruses that currently exist today.
