Another pandemic on the Covid-19 scale is likely to affect the world in the next 60 years, researchers have warned, and could become much more common.
Covid-19 is one of the deadliest viral outbreaks in more than a century, according to a team led by experts from the University of Padua in Italy, which studied the spread of disease around the world over the past 400 years to predict the future risk.
They found that statistically, extreme pandemics are not as rare as previously assumed, and are more likely, and the next one will take place in 2080.
U.S. researchers found that the probability of a pandemic with a similar impact to Covid-19, and on a similar global scale, is about 2% in any given year.
This means that someone born in the year 2000 would have approximately a 38% chance of suffering from one and will have another when they turn 60 years old.
They did not explore the reason for the growing risk, but said it was probably due to population growth, changes in food systems, environmental degradation, and more frequent contact between humans and animals that carry disease.
The team also found that the likelihood of another major pandemic “only grows” and that we should be more prepared for future risks.
Another pandemic on the Covid-19 scale is likely to affect the world in the next 60 years, researchers have warned, and could become much more common.
The study author, Marco Marani, and the team used new statistical methods to measure the scale and frequency of disease outbreaks without immediate medical intervention.
His tests looked at plague, smallpox, cholera, typhus and a number of new flu viruses over the past four centuries.
They found considerable variability in pandemic speed in the past, but they also found patterns in outbreak frequency.
This allowed them to predict the possibility of events occurring on a similar scale.
“The most important takeaway is that big pandemics like COVID-19 and the Spanish flu are relatively likely,” said co-author William Pan of Duke University.
“Understanding that pandemics are not so rare should increase the priority of efforts to prevent and control them in the future.”
In the case of the deadliest pandemic in modern history, the Spanish flu, which killed more than 30 million people from 1918 to 1920, the risk of a similar event occurring again ranged from 0.3 % and 1.9% annually.
Otherwise, these figures mean that a pandemic of such an extreme scale is statistically likely to occur in the next 400 years.
The team also found that the risk of severe outbreaks, that is, those on a scale similar to Covid-19 or the Spanish flu, is growing rapidly.
As part of the new research, they examined the increasing rate at which new pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2 have been triggered in human populations over the past 50 years.
This revealed that the likelihood of new disease outbreaks is likely to triple in the coming decades.
Using this increased risk factor, Marani and colleagues estimate that a similar-scale pandemic to Covid-19 is likely to occur in a 59-year period, a result they write is “much lower than expected. intuitively “.
They also calculated the probability of a pandemic capable of eliminating all human life, finding it statistically probable in the next 12,000 years.
“This does not mean that we can count on a 59-year recovery from a Covid-like pandemic, nor that we are safe from a calamity on the Spanish flu scale for another 300 years,” according to the paper co-author Gabriel Katul de Duke.
“These events are equally likely in any year during this period,” he explained, adding that when a 100-year flood occurs today, one can erroneously presume that one can afford to wait another 100 years before living. another such event.
This impression is false. Another 100-year flood could be achieved the following year. ”
Covid-19 is one of the deadliest viral outbreaks in more than a century, according to a team led by experts from the University of Padua in Italy, which studied the spread of disease around the world over the past 400 years to predict the future risk
Pan says outbreaks are becoming more frequent in part due to population growth, changes in food systems, environmental degradation and more frequent contact between humans and animals that carry disease.
He said the statistical analysis was only intended to characterize the risks, not explain what is driving them, but hoped it would provoke a deeper exploration of these reasons.
“This points to the importance of early response to disease outbreaks and capacity building for pandemic surveillance on a local and global scale,” Pan said.
“As well as to set a research agenda to understand why large outbreaks are becoming more common,” he added.
The findings have been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.