Temen que otro virus salte de la vida silvestre a los humanos, uno que es mucho m\u00e1s letal pero que se propaga tan f\u00e1cilmente como el SARS-CoV-2, la cepa del coronavirus que causa el COVID-19. Un virus como ese podr\u00eda cambiar la trayectoria de la vida en\u00a0el planeta, dicen los expertos.<\/p>\n
As the COVID-19 pandemic heads for a showdown with vaccines it\u2019s expected to lose, many experts in the field of emerging infectious diseases are already focused on preventing the next one.<\/p>\n
They fear another virus will leap from wildlife into humans, one that is far more lethal but spreads as easily as SARS-CoV-2, the strain of coronavirus that causes COVID-19. A virus like that could change the trajectory of life on the planet, experts say.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat keeps me up at night is that another coronavirus like MERS, which has a much, much higher mortality rate, becomes as transmissible as COVID,\u201d said Christian Walzer, executive director of health at the Wildlife Conservation Society. \u201cThe logistics and the psychological trauma of that would be unbearable.\u201d<\/p>\n
SARS-CoV-2 has an average mortality rate of less than 1%, while the mortality rate for Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS \u2014 which spread from camels into humans \u2014 is 35%. Other viruses that have leapt the species barrier to humans, such as bat-borne Nipah, have a mortality rate as high as 75%.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a huge diversity of viruses in nature, and there is the possibility that one has the Goldilocks characteristics of pre-symptomatic transmission with a high fatality rate,\u201d said Raina Plowright, a virus researcher at the Bozeman Disease Ecology Lab in Montana. (COVID-19 is highly transmissible before the onset of symptoms but fortunately is far less lethal than several other known viruses.) \u201cIt would change civilization.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why in November the German Federal Foreign Office and the Wildlife Conservation Society held a virtual conference called One Planet, One Health, One Future, aimed at heading off the next pandemic by helping world leaders understand that killer viruses like SARS-CoV-2 \u2014 and many other less deadly pathogens \u2014 are unleashed on the world by the destruction of nature.<\/p>\n
With the world\u2019s attention gripped by the spread of the coronavirus, infectious disease experts are redoubling their efforts to show the robust connection between the health of nature, wildlife and humans. It is a concept known as One Health.<\/p>\n
While the idea is widely accepted by health officials, many governments have not factored it into policies. So the conference was timed to coincide with the meeting of the world\u2019s economic superpowers, the G20, to urge them to recognize the threat that wildlife-borne pandemics pose, not only to people but also to the global economy.<\/p>\n
The Wildlife Conservation Society \u2014 America\u2019s oldest conservation organization, founded in 1895 \u2014 has joined with 20 other leading conservation groups to ask government leaders \u201cto prioritize protection of highly intact forests and other ecosystems, and work in particular to end commercial wildlife trade and markets for human consumption as well as all illegal and unsustainable wildlife trade,\u201d they said in a recent press release.<\/p>\n
Experts predict it would cost about $700 billion to institute these and other measures, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society. On the other hand, it\u2019s estimated that COVID-19 has cost $26 trillion in economic damage. Moreover, the solution offered by those campaigning for One Health goals would also mitigate the effects of climate change and the loss of biodiversity.<\/p>\n
The growing invasion of natural environments as the global population soars makes another deadly pandemic a matter of when, not if, experts say \u2014 and it could be far worse than COVID. The spillover of animal, or zoonotic, viruses into humans causes some 75% of emerging infectious diseases.<\/p>\n
But multitudes of unknown viruses, some possibly highly pathogenic, dwell in wildlife around the world. Infectious disease experts estimate<\/a> there are 1.67 million viruses in nature; only about 4,000 have been identified.<\/p>\n SARS-CoV-2 likely originated in horseshoe bats in China and then passed to humans, perhaps through an intermediary host, such as the pangolin \u2014 a scaly animal that is widely hunted and eaten.<\/p>\n While the source of SARS-CoV-2 is uncertain, the animal-to-human pathway for other viral epidemics, including Ebola, Nipah and MERS, is known. Viruses that have been circulating among and mutating in wildlife, especially bats, which are numerous around the world and highly mobile, jump into humans, where they find a receptive immune system and spark a deadly infectious disease outbreak.<\/p>\n