Scientists claim that human deaths from four types of killer viruses that lurk in animals will soar 12-fold due to climate change.
So we now have two things to worry about for the price of one!
Experts from US biotech company Ginkgo Bioworks are calling for ‘urgent action’ to address the risk to global public health.
Their findings were published in the journal BMJ Global Health.
The Mail Online reports: Human epidemics caused by zoonotic diseases — also known as spillovers — could be more frequent in the future due to climate change and deforestation, they warned.
Both factors mean humans coming into contact with animals more frequently.
The team’s analysis looked at historic trends for four particular viral pathogens.
These were filoviruses, which include Ebola and Marburg, SARS (Covid’s cousin), Nipah, and machupo (which causes Bolivian haemorrhagic fever).
The study did not include Covid, which caused the global pandemic in 2020 and is likely to have originated in bats.
It looked at more than 3,000 outbreaks between 1963-2019, identifying 75 spillover events in 24 countries.
The database covered epidemics reported by the World Health Organization (WHO), and outbreaks occurring since 1963 that killed 50 or more people.