There’s a 27.5% chance a pandemic as deadly as COVID-19 could take place in the next decade as viruses emerge more frequently, with rapid vaccine rollout the key to reducing fatalities, according to a predictive health analytics firm.
Climate change, growth in international travel, increasing populations and the threat posed by zoonotic diseases contribute to the risk, according to London-based Airfinity Ltd. But if effective vaccines are rolled out 100 days after the discovery of a new pathogen, the likelihood of a deadly pandemic drops to 8.1%, according to the firm’s modeling.
In a worst-case scenario, a bird flu type virus that mutates to allow human-to-human transmission could kill as many as 15,000 people in the U.K. in a single day, Airfinity said.
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