Another COVID-like pandemic could occur in the next 10 years: Report

Even as countries, in bits and parts, are fighting rising cases of COVID, a report states that a similar pandemic is likely in the next decade. This report comes as India is witnessing gradually increasing cases of COVID for the past few days. India recorded over 11,000 new cases on Thursday. 

According to a report in Bloomberg that cited predictive health analytics firm Airfinity Ltd, there is a 27.5 per cent chance of a deadly pandemic like COVID-19 occurring in the next decade. This is likely to happen as viruses are emerging more frequently. 

It is believed that the pandemic would be aided by climate change, growth in international travel, increasing population, as well as threat posed by zoonotic diseases. Apart from the swine flu pandemic in 2009, the world already saw three coronaviruses that caused SARS, MERS and COVID-19. 

The Airfinity report, however, also stated that if effective vaccines are rolled out 100 days after the discovery of a pathogen, then the likelihood of a deadly pandemic drops to 8.1 per cent. Some high-risk pathogens such as MERS and Zika still don’t have approved vaccines or treatments. 

In a worst-case scenario, the firm stated, a bird flu type virus could mutate to allow human-to-human transmission and kill as many as 15,000 people in the UK in a day. The fast spread of H5N1 bird flu strain is also stoking concerns. 

The firm also believes that existing surveillance policies are unlikely to detect a new pandemic in a timely manner. 

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