The pandemic could be the unknown disease World Health Organization warned about in 2018

IN 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) released a list of 10 diseases that can cause epidemics and all were viral in nature. Besides the usual suspects such as zika, Ebola and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome or SARS (triggered by a coronavirus), it also had a Disease X, to be caused by an unknown pathogen (see “Repeated Attacks”, p37). There is now a growing consensus that COVID-19 is Disease X.

“This outbreak (COVID-19) is rapidly becoming the first true pandemic challenge that fits the Disease X category,” writes Marion Koopmans, head, viroscience department, Erasmus University Medical Centre in The Netherlands in journal Peter Daszak, who was part of the WHO team that collated the 2018 list, writes in the York Times that they had postulated that Disease X would be a viral originating in animals and would emerge in a place where economic development drives people and wildlife together. The group predicted that the disease would be confused with other diseases during the initial stages and would spread quickly due to travel and trade. Disease X would have a mortality rate higher than seasonal flu and would spread as easily as the flu. It would shake the financial markets even before it became pandemic. “In a nutshell, COVID-19 is Disease X,” he writes. This flies in the face of WHO’s expectations that the next pandemic would be that of influenza.

The devastation caused by

COVID-19 pandemic is a rude reminder of the fact that the world needs to better understand and manage epidemics. “Our understanding of infectious diseases has improved. But we don’t fully understand all aspects regarding the emergence of epidemics,” says Suresh V Kuchipudi, clinical professor and associate director, Animal Diagnostic Lab, Department of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences, the Pennsylvania State University. He, however, highlights a similarity among the past few epidemics. “RNA viruses have caused all the recent major outbreaks, including he says. Due to their inherent nature to mutate and evolve, RNA viruses are more likely to cause future epidemics. tracked 1,483 epidemic events in 172 countries between 2011 and 2018. Nearly 60 per cent of the recent epidemics were zoonotic, of which 72 per cent originated in wildlife. Besides

reported nine disease outbreaks in the first 79 days of 2020.

Climate change and environmental degradation are making matters worse as they help viruses to mutate faster, thus increasing the rate of spread. RNA viruses have mutation rates that are up to a million times higher than their hosts. These high rates are correlated with enhanced virulence and evolvability, traits considered beneficial for viruses, wrote Siobain Duffy, associate professor at the School of Environmental and