Disease X: Strategy To Prevent Next Pandemic Has Been Identified - Don't Disturb Bats!
Researchers from Cornell University and the Wildlife Conservation Society propose a novel strategy for averting future pandemics. They say that coexisting peacefully with bats can help prevent the outbreak.
In what could be a significant development in the global efforts to prevent the outbreak of Disease X, the next potential pandemic, multiple times deadlier than COVID-19, scientists have suggested a way to stop it in its tracks.
Researchers from Cornell University and the Wildlife Conservation Society propose a novel strategy for averting future pandemics.
UNSPLASH
Peaceful coexistence with bats
According to scientists, coexisting peacefully with bats can help prevent the outbreak of pandemics in the future.
The study said that stopping hunting, eating, and trading of bats; staying out of their caves; stopping deforesting and degrading of, or even starting to restore, their natural habitats; and stopping grazing livestock where bats live, will indisputably decrease the chances of another pandemic.
BCCL
Bats and zoonotic disease outbreaks
It should be noted that fruit bats have been linked to several zoonotic disease outbreaks in the past.
This includes COVID-19 and Nipah, which jumped from bats to humans.
Bats have known reservoirs for a suite of viral pathogens, such as rabies virus (Rhabdoviridae family), Marburg virus (Filoviridae family), Hendra virus (Paramyxoviridae family), Nipah virus (Paramyxoviridae family), and MERS-CoV (Coronaviridae family), and bats of the Pteropodidae family are strongly believed to be a source of viruses of the genus Ebolavirus.
BCCL
Reduce contact with bats
Though the study doesn't mention disease X, it speaks about preventing future pandemics.
"Humanity needs to substantially decrease direct and indirect contact with high-risk wildlife, such as bats, to decrease the likelihood of viral spillover causing another pandemic," it said.
"Perhaps the simplest thing that humans can do to lower pandemic risk, essentially immediately and at minimal cost, is to make harming or disturbing bats and their habitats a global taboo," it added.
UNSPLASH
What is Deseas X
There is no clear definition for Deseas X, but scientists have said that it could be triggered by a yet-to-be-identified pathogen.
WHO has been warning about Disease X since 2017-18 and it doesn't specify any particular outbreak but was listed among a host of infections that could result in the next global epidemic and should be prioritised.
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Bobins Abraham is the Assistant News Editor at Indiatimes. He has more than twelve years of experience in TV and digital journalism. An avid student of history and geopolitics, he is a conservationist and environmentalist at heart. He writes on environment, sustainability, human-animal conflict and more.
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