Here's All About Disease X, The Next Pandemic, Which Could Be Worse Than COVID-19

Nearly four years after COVID-19 first surfaced in Wuhan, China, the world is yet to come out of it fully, and already, there are concerns that the next, even worse pandemic could be around the corner.

In May this year, the World Health Organization (WHO) also warned of the threat of an "inevitable" next pandemic "Disease X, raising concerns across the globe.

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What is Disease X?

It should be noted that Disease X as a term has existed before COVID-19.

Disease X was first coined in 2018 by the WHO, and it was among the world body's "Blue print list priority diseases" that could cause the next deadly pandemic, including Ebola, SARS and Zika.

"Disease X represents the knowledge that a serious international epidemic could be caused by a pathogen currently unknown to cause human disease," the WHO said. The Blueprint list highlights infectious diseases for which we lack medical countermeasures.

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How Disease X could spread

Some public health experts believe the next Disease X will be zoonotic, meaning it will originate in wild or domestic animals and then spill over to infect humans, like Ebola, HIV/AIDS and COVID-19.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic killed some 20 million people globally, the experts contended that the world got somewhat "lucky".

"The point is that the vast majority of people infected with the virus managed to recover," the experts said.

"Ebola, on the other hand, has a fatality rate of around 67 per cent. Bird flu is not far behind at 60 per cent. Even MERS hit 34 per cent. So we certainly can't bank on the next pandemic being easily contained."

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What could cause Disease X

Kate Bingham, the former chair of the UK Vaccine Taskforce, has warned that the next pandemic could come from a million unknown viruses and kill about 50 million people like the Spanish Flu.

In her new book, co-authored by vaccine expert Tim Hames, they argue that more viruses are busily replicating and mutating than all the other life forms on our planet combined.

According to the experts, thousands of different viruses could evolve to spark a pandemic. There is also a risk that viruses could jump between species and "mutate dramatically".

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"So far, scientists are aware of 25 virus families, each of them comprising hundreds or thousands of different viruses, any of which could evolve to cause a pandemic," Bingham and Hames said.

Can Coronavirus cause another pandemic?

Chinese virologist Shi Zhengli also has warned that another COVID-19-like pandemic is highly likely.

In a new study, Shi and colleagues from the Wuhan Institute of Virology evaluated the human spillover risk of 40 coronavirus species.

The findings published in the English-language journal Emerging Microbes & Infections in July reported 20 'highly risky' coronavirus species.

"If a coronavirus caused diseases to emerge before, there is a high chance it will cause future outbreaks," she was quoted as saying by the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

Of the 40 species, six are already known to have caused diseases that infected humans, while there is evidence that a further three caused disease or infected other animal species.

"It is almost certain that there will be future disease emergence, and it is highly likely a (coronavirus) disease again," the study warned.

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