Deadly Disease X Virus Could Kill Millions of Healthy People Like Spanish Flu
Scientist Fear The New illness Will be a Devastating Plague From a Mutant Influenza Strain
Mirror UK, 25 FEB 2019.
Scientists are using microscopes to testing viruses and try to protect us from Disease X (Image: Getty
A devastating new plague called Disease X could kill millions of healthy people, experts have warned.
The deadly illness doesn't exist yet but has already been identified as the next widespread killer by scientists.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) warned last year conditions are perfect for the emergence of Disease X .
"Disease X represents the knowledge that a serious international epidemic could be caused by a pathogen currently unknown to cause human disease," the organisation said in a statement.
Dr Jonathan Quick , chair of the Global Health Council, said:
"Our greatest fear is being blindsided by a new virus, most likely due to animal-human spillover, which then readily spreads from human to human, has at least a 5 to 10 per cent fatality rate, does not respond to existing medicines, and for which an effective vaccine and accurate diagnostic test cannot rapidly be developed.”
It would make it more fatal than Spanish flu, which in 1918 killed young, fit victims across the globe. The killer virus wiped out a staggering 5% of the world’s population.
Scientists are desperately trying to prepare for Disease X, which they fear will evolve from a mutated form of influenza.
And worryingly, influenza is easily spread through the air, can mutate quickly and some strains can pass between species - like bird flu.
Spanish flu killed 100 million and a similar epidemic is set to strike again (Image: www.alamy.com)
John-Arne Rottingen, WHO science advisor, said: "History tells us that it is likely the next big outbreak will be something we have not seen before.
"The point is to make sure we prepare and plan flexibly in terms of vaccines and diagnostic tests."
Studies into Spanish flu suggests older people had been exposed to more flu mutations over their lifetime, and so the disease was genetically similar enough to these strains for older people to have some protection.
Most of the victims in 1918 were younger than 65.
Disease X could even be man-made, rather than a fluke of nature.
Clinicians have tested samples in labs in their extensive research
There are growing fears that the use and development of chemical and biological weapons are on the rise.
In Syria's bloody civil war, chemical bombs have been dropped on civilians on numerous occasions.
And closer to home, the police have confirmed that a nerve agent, probably created in a lab by state-sponsored scientists as a targeted weapon, was used to attack the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury UK.
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