Shelby Bradford in The Scientist:
COVID-19 took the world by storm in early 2020, being declared a pandemic in March of that year. While it was the most recent emerging infectious disease, experts anticipate it won’t be the last. Well before COVID-19, scientists have been prepping for emergence of an unforeseen pandemic: a Disease X (also called pathogen X).1 In 2018, WHO first introduced the term Disease X, described as “an unknown pathogen that could cause a serious international epidemic.”
“Pathogen X could be anything, including a pathogen that we already have that just mutates in a way that we have never thought about, and instantly becomes a monster,” said Kariuki Njenga, a virologist at Washington State University (WSU), explores emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. “Or it could be something that we have never seen before, like SARS-CoV-2.” The question is: When this pathogen emerges, will researchers, and the world, be ready?
More here.
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