Explained: What is ‘Disease X’ that WHO experts are warning us about?

WHO Director General cautioned that we need to be prepared for potential pathogens that can lead to another pandemic.

Hyderabad: Just weeks after announcing that Covid-19 is no longer a global pandemic, World Health Organization (WHO) experts have expressed fear about a likely pandemic.

Called Disease X, they say that it might be deadlier than the coronavirus pandemic.

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“Disease X represents the knowledge that a serious international epidemic could be caused by a pathogen currently unknown to cause human disease. The R&D Blueprint explicitly seeks to enable early cross-cutting R&D preparedness that is also relevant for an unknown ‘Disease X’,” mentioned a blog post on their website.

Disease X could also be zoonotic meaning that it could be caused by germs jumping from animals to humans, experts believe.

That said, Disease X is not real yet and has not been identified in any human beings apart from it being a potential pandemic agent.

Apart from Disease X, Covid-19, Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever, Ebola virus disease, Marburg virus disease, Lassa fever, MERS-CoV and SARS, Nipah and henipaviral diseases, Rift Valley fever and Zika are other diseases on WHO’s priority diseases list.