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Experts: The next pandemic may come from Brazil

2023-05-23 22:58:03Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
Experts: The next pandemic may come from Brazil
Experts: The next pandemic may come from Brazil

The other deadly virus spreading around the world could easily come from a bat that stays in or around the caves being explored by Thiago Bernardi Vieira. Vieira, a biologist from Brazil, has received research grants for his mission to collect basic information about bats in the Amazon.

Deep in the world's largest forest, what science knows about wildlife is limited. Beyond Planaltina, one of the most famous caves in the Amazon, countless other habitats and species of bats that reside there remain completely unstudied or undiscovered.

Some of the most devastating viruses that have infected humans over the past century have emerged from bats as they are species that have a large number of pathogens that can make humans sick. 

And because of the large size of the Amazon forest and the little information researchers have about the species that live there, some scientists see Brazil as a possible "cradle" of a future pandemic.

"The potential for new viruses is great," says Erika Hingst-Zaher, a scientist, adding that bets have already begun that the next pandemic will come from Brazil.

Brazil's health ministry, in a statement to Reuters, said there is currently no evidence that the risk of a new virus emerging from wildlife represents "a public health emergency of national importance".

Home to the third largest number of bat species on the planet, Brazil has seen the chances of a pandemic emerging from Brazil have increased, given the encroachments being made in the Amazon as people clear more and more forests to make way for mines, farms and settlements.

If a never-before-seen pathogen, one even more contagious than the one that caused COVID-19, escaped the Amazon, it could infect 1.2 billion people within six months.

In the first six months of Covid-19, more than 10.5 million people were infected.

Brazil has more high-risk areas than any other country, Reuters found, with 1.5 million square kilometers of land with favorable conditions for zoonotic spread, as the virus jumps from animals to humans. For its analysis, Reuters examined the environmental conditions of about 95 countries around the world where bat viruses infected people between 2002 and 2020. Reuters then used a computer model to estimate the areas most prone to spread, called "zones of dancing". In Brazil, the analysis identified risk zones covering a combined area roughly three times the size of France. Driven by problems, including deforestation and other human interference with bat habitats,

With every intervention made in the Amazon, the possibility increases that a new and deadly pathogen will spread locally and potentially spread to the rest of Brazil and the world. Brazil is unprepared for such an event. The country's health system and research institutions, scientists and health experts warn that they are underfunded and ill-equipped to detect a dangerous pathogen, whether new or known.

In its statement, the Ministry of Health said it monitors the risk of the spread of zoonotic diseases every day through several networks and programs, including 815 epidemiological centers in hospitals across the country. The ministry said it is also studying the creation of a working group to improve zoonotic surveillance that will include representatives from the agriculture, environment, academic and health sectors.

Several scientific studies have found that deforestation causes stress in bats, and stressed bats carry more viruses.

According to a 2022 study, the destruction of the Amazon is accelerating, and scientists said it's only a matter of time before a viral outbreak occurs.

"So far, Brazil and humanity have been lucky to avoid a major spread from the Amazon," the researchers said.

The chances of a new virus emerging from the region are high. When examining the risk of spread, scientists use the number of bat species in a given area as a key variable. One reason is that the physiology of bats is quite similar to other mammals and humans. And because bats live in close quarters, regularly coating each other with bodily fluids, their pathogens easily spread, evolve and change, sometimes becoming more virulent and transmissible. When humans encroach on their habitat and bat species mix, the “viral cocktail” intensifies.

With 172 documented species, and likely many more yet to be identified, Brazil has the third largest variety of bats in the world, behind Colombia and Indonesia, according to data compiled by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.

Biologist Ludmilla Aguiar says so little is known about bats in the Amazon that it could take hundreds of years, given the current state of research and funding, for scientists to document even basic information about all possible species and their specific habitats. . Researchers have already identified several viruses in Brazilian bats that are known to infect humans.

Brazilian bats have also been shown to carry coronaviruses and hantaviruses, deadly pathogens commonly associated with rodents that can cause hemorrhagic fever and lung infections. However, what worries some scientists the most are the viruses they don't recognize.

"We have very little data to really discuss bats and the danger they carry," says biologist Aguiar.

Although no major outbreaks from Brazilian bats have been reported to date, researchers do not rule out unrecorded jumps from unknown pathogens in the past. A new virus may have engulfed local tribes or remote villages at one point, but disappeared before it could spread elsewhere.


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