A frightening forecast of mortality from animal-to-human diseases has been released

Animal-to-human diseases could kill 12 times more people by 2050 compared to pandemic 2020, a new study has issued a shocking warning.

The researchers said “urgent action” was needed to combat the threat and warned that their grim forecast was likely to be an underestimate because the study did not include COVID, Sky News reported.

Animal-to-human diseases could kill at least 12 times more people in 2050 than in 2020, according to a new study.

Epidemics caused by certain zoonotic infectious diseases, also known as spillovers, may occur more frequently in the future due to climate change and deforestation, US biotech company Ginkgo Bioworks said.

Researchers found that between 1963 and 2019, the number of epidemics increased annually by almost 5%, and mortality increased by 9%, Sky News notes.

“If these annual growth rates continue, we expect the pathogens analyzed to cause four times more adverse effects and 12 times more deaths in 2050 than in 2020,” the study said.

However, the researchers cautioned that these numbers may likely be an underestimate because COVID was not included in the study because the disease did not meet their strict inclusion criteria.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has said it is “likely” that the coronavirus was transmitted to humans from bats, but some scientists have disputed this theory, Sky News recalls.

The study, published in BMJ Global Health, analyzed historical trends for four specific types of diseases. This was a group of diseases associated with filoviruses, which included Ebola and Marburg viruses, SARS coronavirus 1, Nipa virus and Machupo virus.

Researchers studied more than 3,000 outbreaks between 1963 and 2019 and identified 75 adverse events in 24 countries.

This included epidemics reported by WHO, outbreaks since 1963 that killed 50 or more people, and historically significant events including the influenza pandemics of 1918 and 1957.

Collectively, these events resulted in a total of 17,232 deaths, of which 15,771 were caused by filoviruses and occurred primarily in Africa.

The researchers added that evidence of recent epidemics caused by zoonotic spillovers suggests that they “are not an aberration or a random cluster” but follow a “multi-year trend in which epidemics caused by spillovers are becoming larger in scale.” , and more frequent.”

According to Sky News, the team added that “urgent action is needed to address the large and growing risk to global health” based on historical trends.