The scientist, who discovered Ebola more than four decades ago, warned that humanity faces an unknown number of new and potentially fatal viruses emerging from the African rainforests, even when a woman shows symptoms of hemorrhagic fever in a remote town in the Democratic Republic of Congo. it has raised fears of deadly new pathogens.
According to CNN, Ingende’s wife was tested for several diseases, including Ebola, but they all came back negative. It sparked fears that his illness could have been caused by the so-called ‘Disease X’, a new “unexpected” pathogen that could spread as rapidly as the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) but has an Ebola death rate of 50 to 90%. The patient who showed Ebola-like symptoms has since recovered.
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The World Health Organization (WHO) has said that “Disease X,” where “X” means unexpected, is hypothetical for now, an outbreak that scientists and public health experts fear could lead to serious illness throughout. the world if and when it happens.
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“We are now in a world where new pathogens will emerge. And that is what constitutes a threat to humanity, ”said Professor Jean-Jacques Muyembe Tamfum, who helped discover the Ebola virus in 1976, while speaking to CNN. When asked if any new disease could be more apocalyptic than Covid-19, he said: “Yes, yes, I think so.”
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Muyembe, according to CNN, has warned that many more zoonotic diseases could emerge, or those that jump from animals to humans. Covid-19 is among those diseases, along with yellow fever and rabies, which are believed to have arisen from an unknown reservoir or the term used to indicate the natural host for a virus in the animal kingdom.
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Muyembe heads the National Institute for Biomedical Research (INRB) in Kinshasa, which is supported by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and WHO and its laboratories are the world’s early warning system for new outbreaks of diseases known as Ebola and, perhaps more importantly, for those diseases that scientists have yet to discover. “If a pathogen emerged from Africa, it will take time to spread around the world. So if this virus is caught early, like in my institution here, there will be a chance for Europe [and the rest of the world] to develop new strategies to combat these new pathogens, ”Muyembe told CNN.
SARS-CoV-2, which causes coronavirus disease, is suspected to have originated in China and possibly from bats. Experts have largely attributed the outbreak of zoonotic diseases to deforestation causing the animals’ natural habitats to disappear.
The coronavirus disease has affected 85 million people, of which 1,843,143 have died worldwide, according to the Johns Hopkins University Covid-19 tracker. India, the second most affected country after the United States, has 10,340,469 infections and its death toll is 149,649.
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