: Are we ready for the next pandemic? #IndiaNEWS #Panorama According to one estimate Earth may have about two million viruses. Virologists estimate that anywhere between six-eight lakhs of those could

Are we ready for the next pandemic? #IndiaNEWS #Panorama
According to one estimate Earth may have about two million viruses. Virologists estimate that anywhere between six-eight lakhs of those could potentially infect the humans

Nandkumar M Kamat

The COVID-19 global infection tally will soon reach 30 million and the total deaths one million. There are signs that the pandemic will not be over till summer next year or April 2021. Many countries are expecting a third wave with the onset of winter soon. Some vaccines would be in the market by February- 2021 but mass vaccination won’t be possible till October-December 2021. Scientists are genuinely worried about another outbreak in the meantime.

Are we ready for the next pandemic within the next one-five years? This is the right question everyone involved in containing morbidity and mortality due to COVID-19 needs to ask.

A pandemic is a global calamity. It could be microbial or viral. A pandemic generally begins with a small local outbreak. When the outbreak is not contained then it becomes endemic. When the endemic goes out of control and spreads to larger areas then it becomes apandemic.

But to declare an endemic as a pandemic is not so easy. The present pandemic began as a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan, Hubei province of China. But it was only on March 11, that the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared COVID-19 as a pandemic. WHO came under heavy criticism for this delay.

Last Monday, the WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that the world must be better prepared for the next pandemic. He said at the WHO headquarters in Geneva that this will not be the last pandemic. He said: “History teaches us that outbreaks and pandemics are a fact of life. But when the next pandemic comes, the world must be ready – more ready than it was this time. ???

How big is the challenge to predict the threat from the viruses? According to one estimate Earth may have about two million viruses. Virologists estimate that anywhere between six-eight lakhs of those could potentially infect the humans. But our present global knowledge of the infectious strains is limited to about 300 viruses. This means we don’t know anything about the rest of the 99 percent and more infectious viruses. This is a frightening scenario.

Countries like India are totally unequipped in the area of virological research. In April 2020, the ICMR team had reported the presence of bat coronavirus (BtCoV) — in two bat species from Kerala, Himachal Pradesh, Puducherry, and Tamil Nadu. These are not known to infect humans but nobody can say anything about the future when these bats come into contact with the humans and transmit the virus which then mutates and becomes infectious.