Climate change could spark the next pandemic by pushing different types of wildlife closer to where humans live, scientists warned.
Health officials inspect bats to be confiscated and culled in the wake of a coronavirus outbreak in Indonesia. different types of wildlife closer to where humans liveThis ecological shift will increase the risk of ‘zoonotic spillover’ – viruses that are transmitted to people, new research revealed.leading to an increase in the amount of germs spreading to humans.
They will emerge in new types of animals – leading to viruses jumping across a ‘stepping stone’ species into humans.Lead author Professor Colin Carlson, of Georgetown University in Washington DC,‘We worry about markets because bringing unhealthy animals together in unnatural combinations creates opportunities for this stepwise process of emergence – like how SARS jumped from bats to civets, then civets to people.
Worryingly, the study found rising temperatures will have the most impact on bats – which account for most spillovers of disease. Prof Carlson said: ‘At least 15,000 new cross-species viral sharing events are projected by 2070 as a result of climate change-driven reorganisation of mammal distribution, under a 2 °C warming scenario.’
Climate change will become the biggest upstream risk factor for disease emergence – exceeding higher-profile issues like deforestation, wildlife trade and industrial farming.The solution is to pair wildlife disease surveillance with real-time studies of environmental change, said the researchers.
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