THE next pandemic could come from a million undiscovered viruses – and be deadlier than Covid, experts have warned.
Vaccine boffins Kate Bingham and Tim Hames said the virus outbreak could kill up to 50 million people on a similar to scale to the Spanish flu.
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In an excerpt of their new book for the Mail Online, they explained how the next pandemic might unfold – and issued a stark warning.
“The 1918–19 flu pandemic killed at least 50 million people worldwide, twice as many as were killed in World War I,” they said.
“Today, we could expect a similar death toll from one of the many viruses that already exist.
“There are more viruses busily replicating and mutating than all the other life forms on our planet combined.
“Not all of them pose a threat to humans, of course – but plenty do.”
The experts warned that thousands of different viruses could evolve to spark a pandemic.
And there is a risk viruses could jump between species and “mutate dramatically”.
“So far, scientists are aware of 25 virus families, each of them comprising hundreds or thousands of different viruses, any of which could evolve to cause a pandemic,” Bingham and Hames said.
“Worse still, they estimate there could be more than one million undiscovered viruses which may be able to jump from one species to another, mutate dramatically and kill millions of human beings.”
They argue the world got somewhat “lucky” with the Covid pandemic – despite the virus killing some 20 million people.
“The point is that the vast majority of people infected with the virus managed to recover,” they said.
“Ebola, on the other hand, has a fatality rate of around 67 per cent.
“Bird flu is not far behind at 60 per cent. Even MERS hit 34 per cent.
“So we certainly can’t bank on the next pandemic being easily contained.”
Fellow expert Dr Jophn McCauley, a member of the WHO Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System, warned it could be the dreaded Spanish flu that could cause the next pandemic.
Since the Covid outbreak, scientists have been searching for the other dangerous viruses likely to cause the next pandemic – which could lead to “case counts and death tolls similar to the Spanish flu”.
Dr McCauley, director of the Worldwide Influenza Centre, said one of his biggest concerns is seasonal flu.
He warned that a future pandemic is likely to come from a flu strain – despite flagging flu figures.
Covid measures such as social distancing and regularly washing hands have contributed to one of the lowest flu circulations for more than a century, the expert said.
But common viruses such as seasonal flu could be much more dangerous in a post-pandemic world.
Dr Erin Sorrell, an expert on emerging infections diseases and influenza, agreed that flu should be considered a “major contender” when searching for the next pandemic.
She told us: “The question is not if we will have another pandemic but when.
“While a pandemic today could lead to case counts and death tolls similar to 1918, it would not be for the same reasons.”
The 1918 influenza pandemic, known as the Spanish flu, infected around a third of the world’s population and is believed to have originated in birds.
THE DEADLIEST PANDEMIC
SPANISH flu killed around 50 million people from 1918 to 1919.
The 1918 influenza pandemic killed more people than World War 1 and the Black Death.
Known as Spanish Flu, the virus is believed to have originated in wild and domestic birds, although some have argued that it may have originated in pigs.
While known as the Spanish Flu, scientists have since deemed it very unlikely that the disease originated in Spain.
China, France, the US and Britain have all been touted as the birthplace of the virus.
Most casualties attributed to the pandemic came from the second wave of the disease, as a mutated form of the virus was spread by troops between September and November, 1918.
Unlike coronavirus, Spanish Flu had a high mortality rate in the young, especially in children younger than five and 20-40 year olds.
At its most potent, the disease could kill a healthy young person within 24 hours of the first symptoms showing.
Some of the worst symptoms included blistering fevers, pneumonia, and nosebleeds so severe that patients could drown in their own lungs.
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