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A pandemic is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has a sudden increase in cases and spreads across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of individuals. Widespread endemic diseases with a stable number of infected individuals such as recurrences of seasonal influenza are generally excluded as they occur simultaneously in large regions of the globe rather than being spread worldwide.
A zoonosis or zoonotic disease is an infectious disease of humans caused by a pathogen that can jump from a non-human vertebrate to a human. When humans infect non-humans, it is called reverse zoonosis or anthroponosis.
Influenza A virus (IAV) is the only species of the genus Alphainfluenzavirus of the virus family Orthomyxoviridae. It is a pathogen with strains that infect birds and some mammals, as well as causing seasonal flu in humans. Mammals in which different strains of IAV circulate with sustained transmission are bats, pigs, horses and dogs; other mammals can occasionally become infected.
Avian influenza, also known as avian flu or bird flu, is a disease caused by the influenza A virus, which primarily affects birds but can sometimes affect mammals including humans. Wild aquatic birds are the primary host of the influenza A virus, which is enzootic in many bird populations.
In infectious disease ecology and epidemiology, a natural reservoir, also known as a disease reservoir or a reservoir of infection, is the population of organisms or the specific environment in which an infectious pathogen naturally lives and reproduces, or upon which the pathogen primarily depends for its survival. A reservoir is usually a living host of a certain species, such as an animal or a plant, inside of which a pathogen survives, often without causing disease for the reservoir itself. By some definitions a reservoir may also be an environment external to an organism, such as a volume of contaminated air or water.
EcoHealth Alliance is a US-based non-governmental organization with a stated mission of protecting people, animals, and the environment from emerging infectious diseases. The nonprofit organization focuses on research aimed at preventing pandemics and promoting conservation in hotspot regions worldwide.
An emerging infectious disease (EID) is an infectious disease whose incidence has increased recently, and could increase in the near future. The minority that are capable of developing efficient transmission between humans can become major public and global concerns as potential causes of epidemics or pandemics. Their many impacts can be economic and societal, as well as clinical. EIDs have been increasing steadily since at least 1940.
An emergent virus is a virus that is either newly appeared, notably increasing in incidence/geographic range or has the potential to increase in the near future. Emergent viruses are a leading cause of emerging infectious diseases and raise public health challenges globally, given their potential to cause outbreaks of disease which can lead to epidemics and pandemics. As well as causing disease, emergent viruses can also have severe economic implications. Recent examples include the SARS-related coronaviruses, which have caused the 2002–2004 outbreak of SARS (SARS-CoV-1) and the 2019–2023 pandemic of COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2). Other examples include the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes HIV/AIDS; the viruses responsible for Ebola; the H5N1 influenza virus responsible for avian influenza; and H1N1/09, which caused the 2009 swine flu pandemic. Viral emergence in humans is often a consequence of zoonosis, which involves a cross-species jump of a viral disease into humans from other animals. As zoonotic viruses exist in animal reservoirs, they are much more difficult to eradicate and can therefore establish persistent infections in human populations.
The human virome is the total collection of viruses in and on the human body. Viruses in the human body may infect both human cells and other microbes such as bacteria. Some viruses cause disease, while others may be asymptomatic. Certain viruses are also integrated into the human genome as proviruses or endogenous viral elements.
Spillover infection, also known as pathogen spillover and spillover event, occurs when a reservoir population with a high pathogen prevalence comes into contact with a novel host population. The pathogen is transmitted from the reservoir population and may or may not be transmitted within the host population. Due to climate change and land use expansion, the risk of viral spillover is predicted to significantly increase.
Viral metagenomics uses metagenomic technologies to detect viral genomic material from diverse environmental and clinical samples. Viruses are the most abundant biological entity and are extremely diverse; however, only a small fraction of viruses have been sequenced and only an even smaller fraction have been isolated and cultured. Sequencing viruses can be challenging because viruses lack a universally conserved marker gene so gene-based approaches are limited. Metagenomics can be used to study and analyze unculturable viruses and has been an important tool in understanding viral diversity and abundance and in the discovery of novel viruses. For example, metagenomics methods have been used to describe viruses associated with cancerous tumors and in terrestrial ecosystems.
The One Health Institute works at the interface of animals, people, plants, and the environment to solve complex problems that impact health and conservation around the world. The institute is part of the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine and is home to the Karen C. Drayer Wildlife Health Center and many other programs and projects. The executive director of the One Health Institute is Dr. Michael Ziccardi. The One Health approach recognizes that the health of domestic animals, wildlife, and people are inextricably linked to one another and the environment.
Jonna Ann Keener Mazet is an American veterinarian, epidemiologist and a Distinguished Professor of Epidemiology and Disease Ecology at the University of California, Davis. Since 2021, she has served as the Vice Provost of Grand Challenges at the University of California, Davis where she provides leadership for transdisciplinary research and solution-oriented activities dedicated to global health problem solving across. UC Davis Grand Challenges focuses on developing climate solutions, preventing and responding to emerging health threats, promoting sustainable food systems, and reimagining the role of land-grant universities. Dr. Mazet is known for her long-standing achievements and contributions to operationalizing the One Health approach, which is now a key component of the Quadripartite Organizations core mandates for addressing health challenges. In 2009, Dr. Mazet founded the One Health Institute at the University of California, Davis and served as the Executive Director until July 2020. Recognized for her innovative and holistic approach to emerging environmental and global health threats, she is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Disease X is a placeholder name that was adopted by the World Health Organization (WHO) in February 2018 on their shortlist of blueprint priority diseases to represent a hypothetical, unknown pathogen that could cause a future epidemic. The WHO adopted the placeholder name to ensure that their planning was sufficiently flexible to adapt to an unknown pathogen. Former Director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci stated that the concept of Disease X would encourage WHO projects to focus their research efforts on entire classes of viruses, instead of just individual strains, thus improving WHO capability to respond to unforeseen strains.
Wildlife trafficking practices have resulted in the emergence of zoonotic diseases. Exotic wildlife trafficking is a multi-billion dollar industry that involves the removal and shipment of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, invertebrates, and fish all over the world. Traded wild animals are used for bushmeat consumption, unconventional exotic pets, animal skin clothing accessories, home trophy decorations, privately owned zoos, and for traditional medicine practices. Dating back centuries, people from Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Europe have used animal bones, horns, or organs for their believed healing effects on the human body. Wild tigers, rhinos, elephants, pangolins, and certain reptile species are acquired through legal and illegal trade operations in order to continue these historic cultural healing practices. Within the last decade nearly 975 different wild animal taxa groups have been legally and illegally exported out of Africa and imported into areas like China, Japan, Indonesia, the United States, Russia, Europe, and South America.
Pandemic prevention is the organization and management of preventive measures against pandemics. Those include measures to reduce causes of new infectious diseases and measures to prevent outbreaks and epidemics from becoming pandemics.
Peter Daszak is a British zoologist, consultant and public expert on disease ecology, in particular on zoonosis. He is the president of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit non-governmental organization that supports various programs on global health and pandemic prevention. He is also a member of the Center for Infection and Immunity at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. He lives in Suffern, New York.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been efforts by scientists, governments, and others to determine the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Similar to other outbreaks, the virus was derived from a bat-borne virus and most likely was transmitted to humans via another animal in nature, or during wildlife bushmeat trade such as that in food markets. While other explanations, such as speculations that SARS-CoV-2 was accidentally released from a laboratory have been proposed, such explanations are not supported by evidence. Conspiracy theories about the virus's origin have also proliferated.
Noam Ross is an experienced disease ecologist and R expert working out of New York.
David Hayman is a New Zealand-based epizootic epidemiologist and disease ecologist whose general multi-disciplinary work focuses on the maintenance of infectious diseases within their hosts and the process of emergence and transmission to humans specifically related to bats. He has gathered data on the relationship between ecological degradation due to anthropogenic actions, and increased pathogen emergence in humans and animals. During COVID-19 he was involved as an expert in several international collaborations, some convened by the World Health Organization, and was a regular commentator in the New Zealand media about the country's response to the pandemic. He has had lead roles in research organisations at Massey University and Te Pūnaha Matatini and was the recipient of the 2017 Rutherford Discovery Fellowship Award. Since 2014 Hayman has been a professor at Massey University.
References
- ↑ Vernimmen, Tim (2020-04-16). "Infectious disease: Making — and breaking — the animal connection". Knowable Magazine. doi: 10.1146/knowable-041620-1 . S2CID 218810265.
- ↑ "Contact". Global Virome Project. Archived from the original on 2022-08-22. Retrieved 2022-08-22.
- 1 2 Carroll, Dennis; Daszak, Peter; Wolfe, Nathan D.; Gao, George F.; Morel, Carlos M.; Morzaria, Subhash; Pablos-Méndez, Ariel; Tomori, Oyewale; Mazet, Jonna A. K. (2018-02-23). "The Global Virome Project". Science. 359 (6378): 872–874. Bibcode:2018Sci...359..872C. doi:10.1126/science.aap7463. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 29472471. S2CID 3543474.
- 1 2 "Ambitious Global Virome Project Could Mark End of Pandemic Era". 22 February 2018.
- ↑ Zhang, Peter (2021-07-09). "Reproduction of 'The COVID-19 Pandemic and the $16 Trillion Virus'". JAMA. doi: 10.48152/ssrp-c638-xc85 .
- ↑ Schmidt, Charles (2018-10-11). "The virome hunters". Nature Biotechnology. 36 (10): 916–919. doi:10.1038/nbt.4268. ISSN 1087-0156. PMC 7097093 . PMID 30307913.
- ↑ "Before the Next Pandemic, an Ambitious Push to Catalog Viruses in Wildlife".