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These cities also have a weak health system and their airports have good connections to global transport flows. The pandemic starting points described could be as high as 20 percent. all megacities in the world with a developed transport network.
The coronavirus pandemic is not the first global epidemic caused by a pathogen from the animal world, and it is certainly not the last. After all, increasing human interference with nature, the destruction of natural habitats, and mass ranching are increasing human-animal contacts. All of this facilitates the transmission of viruses and other pathogens to humans.
Studies show that some groups of animals are more effective “containers” for pathogens than others. Such groups of animals include bats, rodents, and birds.
“However, it takes two more factors for a local outbreak to become a pandemic,” explains Dr. Michael Walsh of the University of Sydney and colleagues. The new pathogen must first become undetectable among the local population and then spread quickly and efficiently to other regions. Transport by air and water, for example, can help spread the virus.
To find out where such conditions might arise, Mr. Walsh and his colleagues divided all cities and regions of the world into three categories. In particular, they have generally identified regions with a high abundance of animals that act as “containers” for pathogens and where humans and animals live in close proximity to each other.
Regions with frequent contacts between wild and farm animals, between wildlife and humans, or between farm animals and humans, were classified as a yellow zone by the researchers. The regions where the three groups are in contact with each other are called orange zones.
In the next phase, the researchers discovered in which regions these areas overlap with poor health systems. Finally, researchers have identified which cities in these red zones have good air connections with the rest of the world, increasing the risk of a new disease spreading rapidly.
The following results were obtained: 40 percent. Cities with well-developed transport connections are located near areas where there is frequent intensive contact between animals and humans, in other words, near the yellow and orange areas.
Among them were the major cities of southern China and western India, as well as the megacities of Mexico and the coasts of South America. There are also major cities in Europe that are in the orange zone. In Germany, Frankfurt am Main and Stuttgart fall into this area.
Also, 14-20 percent. cities with intensive human-animal contact areas have poorly functioning health care systems. It is primarily associated with many transportation hubs in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa, including Mumbai and Delhi, Jakarta and Phnom Penh, Nairobi and Lagos, Walsh and colleagues write. This shows the risks inherent in many transportation hubs around the world.
According to the researchers, their findings may help reduce the risk of disease occurring and spreading.
“Based on the information we have provided, it is possible to envisage specific measures to improve the design of health systems, the conditions of livestock, the protection of wildlife habitats and the control of the world’s transportation hubs.” Walsh said.
When does a new pandemic await us?
What viruses have the potential to jump from animals to the human body? As the risk analysis has revealed, there really are a lot of them, such as the Predict_CoV-35 virus, writes the German source Süddeutsche Zeitung.
It may all have started with a hunter in Central Africa who killed a chimpanzee. The man may have been injured while fighting the beast. The monkey’s blood may have entered the body of the game hunter through an open wound.
Be that as it may, the virus entered the human body along with the physiological fluids of the chimpanzee. This insignificant event may have happened a hundred years ago, but then it drastically changed the fate of most people. The aforementioned animal-to-human transmission of the virus has become one of the factors that ultimately led to the HIV pandemic, according to the article.
So far, around 250 pathogenic viruses have jumped from the animal world to the human body. These include the Ebola virus, monkeypox virus, hepatitis E, and MERS. And somewhere, perhaps in dense bushes or settlements where rats abound, on some farm or in a live market, that story of virus transmission can repeat itself at any time. The circumstances that lead to this have been described with great precision by researchers in the scientific journal PNAS.
Researchers at the University of California, in a survey of 65 experts in virology, epidemiology, ecology and medicine, identified 31 factors that increase the risk of transmitting viruses from animals to humans.
These factors are also claimed to be related to the characteristics of the virus itself. Therefore, the risk of a new epidemic is increasing as viruses have repeatedly shown that they can infect humans and spread rapidly.
The risk of spreading the virus is also determined by the animal nature of the virus. The risk is greater when the virus circulates in the body of animals that are in frequent contact with humans. Or when a particular virus is even carried by several animal species, such as when virus pathogens can be detected in both rodents and primates, indicating the adaptive capacity of the pathogens.
Furthermore, factors in the environment around them play an equally important role, such as when many people live where many species of animals breed or when people aggressively enter the wildlife environment. After all, where man crosses trees, turns natural spaces into fields, builds roads in remote areas, the likelihood of contact between new humans and wildlife increases dramatically, and such interactions can have very painful and often difficult-to-predict consequences. said article.
The researchers calculated the risk of these factors in about 900 viruses found in animals and ranked the risk of transmitting the virus to humans.
“The first place was taken by the cause of the Lhasa fever. It regularly causes outbreaks of human disease, infecting humans through the feces of mice that live in African fields and gardens, ”the publication said.
The second place is occupied by Sars-CoV-2. The virus will most likely eventually take the top spot, as soon as more information is gathered about it, the researchers say. Currently, data on the animals in which the virus was born is lacking: bat and amphibian variants are being considered.
“Sars-CoV-2 belongs to the family of coronaviruses, and six of its members have already shown that they can cause harm to humans. Therefore, it is not surprising that, in terms of viruses associated with the probability of a new pandemic, several other coronaviruses have been mentioned that have not yet been identified in humans.
Researchers are already isolating a virus, which has been given the working name Predict_CoV-35. The virus is transmitted by bats in various regions of Southeast Asia, including those that live near human settlements and are frequently captured.
Other viruses that can be transmitted from animals to humans are the new lysaviruses, which also include, for example, rabies. Also mentioned is the so-called Bombali virus, an ebolavirus found in bats in Sierra León a few years ago.
“In total, according to various estimates, there are more than 1.67 million mammals and birds. viruses, at least half of which can be transmitted to humans and cause a new pandemic ”, sums up the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
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