A Global network of doctors, scientists and laboratories works for detect the emergence of new viral threatsmany motivated by the climate changein an attempt to avoid the next global pandemic.
This coalition of “virus hunters”as they call themselves, has already uncovered a unusual disease transmitted by ticks in Thailand or a infectious outbreak in Colombia propagated by mosquitoes.
“The list of things we need to be concerned about, as we’ve seen with Covid-19, is not static,” said Gavin Cloherty, an infectious disease expert who heads Abbott’s Pandemic Defense Coalition.
“We have to be very alert to the bad guys that we already know and who are evolving (…) But also to whether there are new kids in the neighbourhood,” he told AFP.
Virus hunters
The coalition brings together Science and health specialists at universities and health institutions around the world, funded by the medical and healthcare device giant Abbott. By discovering new threats, the group grants the company a advantage when designing diagnostic tests who were key in the response to the Covid pandemic. Their involvement provides the coalition with extensive resources and the ability to detect and sequence, but also respond to new viruses.
“When we find something, we’re able to rapidly develop industrial-scale diagnostic tests,” Cloherty says.
“The idea is to contain an outbreak so that we can prevent a pandemic,” he added.
The coalition has sequenced approximately 13,000 samples since it began operating in 2021.
Colombia, Oropouche outbreak
In Colombia discovered a Oropouche outbreak, a virus transmitted by midges and mosquitoes which had barely been observed previously. Phylogenetic work to trace the family tree of the strain revealed that came from Peru or Ecuador and not from Brazil, another focus of this disease. “You can see where things are coming from. It’s important from a public health perspective,” Cloherty said.
dengue mosquitoes.jpg
Depositphotos
Thailand, tick-borne virus
Most recently, the coalition worked with doctors in Thailand to discover that a tick-borne virus was behind a mysterious cluster of cases of sick patients. “At the time we didn’t know which virus caused this syndrome,” explains Pakpoom Phoompoung, associate professor of infectious diseases at Siriraj Hospital in Bangkok.
ticks
Analysis and sequencing of samples taken since 2014 concluded that many were positive
severe fever with thrombocytopenic syndrome virus (SFTSV). “Less than ten patients have been previously diagnosed with SFTSV in Thailand (…) We do not have PCR tests for diagnosis, we do not have serology for diagnosis of this viral infection,” Pakpoom told AFP.
Diagnosing it “is difficult, labor-intensive and also expensive.”
Climate change, the driving force behind new viral threats
At the same time, the need to control these threats is growing because Climate change is expanding the spectrum of infectious diseases globally. This link has been well established by science and is multifaceted.
Nails Warmer conditions allow transmitters such as mosquitoes to live in new environmentsthe increase in the Heavy rains create more breeding grounds and the Extreme weather events leave more people outdoors, where they are more vulnerable. Human impact on the planet encourages the spread and evolution of infectious diseases in other ways: loss of biodiversity strength to the virus to evolve into new hosts and pushes out the animals closer to populated areas.
Climate change.jpg
Phylogenetic analysis of the SFTSV strain from Thailand provides an example of the complex interrelationships. The virus moved from a tick species with a limited geographic range to the more resilient and widespread Asian longhorned tick. The analyses suggest that Its evolution was mainly caused by the use of pesticides that reduced the population of the first type of tick. Once in the new host, The virus has spread further because Asian long-horned ticks can live on birds, which travel farther and faster. “It’s almost like they’re an airline,” Cloherty says.
The traces of climate change are everywhere, from outbreaks of dengue in Latin America and the Caribbean to the spread of the West Nile virus in the United States. While the coalition built on work leading up to the last pandemic, the global spread of Covid-19 was a powerful reminder of the risks of these diseases. But Cloherty fears that people are already forgetting these lessons. “We have to be vigilant,” she says. “Something that happens now in Bangkok could be happening tomorrow in Boston.”
Source: Ambito
