Health: A predictive health analysis firm forecast that there is a 27.5% probability that a deadly pandemic just like Covid-19 will hit the world in the next decade, Bloomberg reported.
The London-based firm, Airfinity Ltd, gathers Climate change, growth in international travel, increasing populations and the threat posed by zoonotic diseases as the justification for its prediction.
The firm predicts a worst-case scenario that a bird flu-type virus that could mutate and allow human–to–human transmission could kill at least 15,000 people in the UK in a single day.
However, it also states that if an effective vaccine is found within 100 days of the detection of a pathogen, the chances of a deadly pandemic drop to 8.1 per cent.
Bloomberg writes that since the world is now living along with Covid-19, experts in health are preparing for another potential global threat. The last two decades witnessed three major coronaviruses that caused SARS and MERS. Then the swine flue in 2009.
There is a rapid increase in H5N1 bird flu cases. So far, the virus has hit a small number of people and a jump, and there are no signs of human-to-human transmission. But the flu spread is skyrocketing in birds and in mammals, which scientists and the government look at with deep concern. Scientists believe that the virus could be mutating to boost its transmission rate.
Airinfinty reminds us that many high-risk viruses like MERS and Zika do not have approved vaccines or treatments. Since the existing surveillance policies mostly fail to detect a new pandemic in time, it said adding that there should be pandemic preparedness measures.