The future holds more, and worse, pandemics ... but this is what can be done about it

The world is at risk of a pandemic era ...

An intergovernmental report says that future pandemics will emerge more often, spread more rapidly, do more damage to the world economy and kill more people than Covid-19 unless there is a transformative change in the global approach to dealing with infectious disease

540000 to 850000

The number of unknown viruses in nature

that could still infect people out of the 1.7-million currently “undiscovered” viruses

estimated to exist in mammals and birds

The cost of Covid-19 was $8-trillion to $16-trillion globally by July 2020. Experts estimate the costs of reducing risks to prevent pandemics to be almost 100 times less than the cost of responding to such pandemics, providing strong economic incentives for transformative change

Ensure that the economic cost of pandemics is factored into production, consumption and government policies and budgets

Enable changes to reduce the types of consumption, globalised agricultural expansion and trade that have led to pandemics — this could include taxes or levies on meat consumption, livestock production and other high pandemic-risk activities

Reduce zoonotic disease risks in the international wildlife trade through a new intergovernmental health and trade partnership. This would mean reducing or removing high disease-risk species in the wildlife trade

Value indigenous people and engage with local communities to achieve greater food security and reduce consumption of wildlife

Improve understanding of the relationship between ecosystem degradation and the risk of disease emergence