A global pandemic of a flu-like virus could kill nearly a billion people if it started to spread tomorrow, scientist have warned.
Experts in the US created a simulation to find out what would happen if a deadly type of influenza virus spread across the globe.
A made-up virus which was spread by coughing managed to kill 150 million people – more than double the UK population – in less than two years in the fictional situation.
The simulation predicted how governments and health authorities around the world would react to a deadly infection spreading so quickly.
And no vaccine had been found by the end of the 20 month scenario – simulated over the course of a day – so the virus could go on to wipe out a huge chunk of the world’s population, an expert said.
Although the situation sounds like something from an apocalypse movie, the researchers said it wasn’t that far-fetched and the world is ‘lucky’ there hasn’t been a global pandemic already.
Scientists have warned a disease outbreak could kill hundreds of millions of people because global health officials are not prepared to make a vaccine for a new disease quickly enough
The scientists at Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health Security in Baltimore, Maryland, called the experiment the Clade X simulation – the name of their fictional disease.
Real health experts took part in the experiment, including US politicians Tom Daschle and Susan Brooks, and former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Julie Gerberding.
But they were not able to stop it from spreading and killing millions of people – making experts worried the world is not prepared for a deadly pandemic.
A pandemic happens when a contagious disease spreads all over the world because most people are not immune to it and it cannot be treated quickly enough.
Dr Eric Toner, designer of the simulation, told Business Insider the world is not ready for a deadly disease outbreak.
‘We don’t have the ability to produce vaccines fast enough’
‘We don’t have the ability to produce vaccines to a novel pathogen within months rather than decades,’ he said.
‘And we don’t have the global public health capabilities that would allow us to rapidly identify and control an outbreak before it becomes a pandemic.
He added that healthcare systems around the world would struggle to treat huge numbers of people and potentially fail under the pressure.
‘It will happen, but I don’t know when,’ he added.
Experts designed the Clade X virus to be as infectious and as deadly as SARS, which killed 10 per cent of 8,000 people it infected in 2002 and 2003.
SARS could have been much worse, the experts told Business Insider, but it didn’t become fully contagious until patients were already in hospital.
Fictional virus released by terrorists
In the Clade X simulation in May, a virus was engineered and released by a bioterrorist group who wanted to reduce the world’s population.
It was a cross between a parainfluenza virus, which cause respiratory illness similar to the common cold and is spread by close contact or touching contaminated objects, and the Nipah virus, which is rare but can kill people within days.
During the scenario US politicians met with the president one month after the virus first appeared, by which time there had been more than 400 cases and 50 deaths.
The virus was mostly contained in Germany and Venezuela, and patients had a fever, a cough, and confusion.
Some patients developed swelling the brain known as encephalitis and fell into a coma.
Experts failed to produce a virus and 150 million people died in less than 2 years
The first case was quickly declared at a university in the US, and scientists and politicians managed to identify the virus, which was spread by coughing and took hold a week before severe symptoms appeared.
But experts around the world were not able to produce a vaccine within the 20 month time frame, and 150 million people died around the world.
Some 15 to 20 million of those deaths happened in the United States.
And Dr Toner said if, in reality, a vaccine could not be produced quickly, a virus like Clade X could kill 900 million people.
‘We think this scenario is quite plausible’
‘I think we learned that even very knowledgeable, experienced, devoted senior public officials who have lived through many crises still have trouble dealing with something like this,’ he said.
‘And it’s not because they are not good or smart or dedicated, it’s because we don’t have the systems we need to enable the kind of response we’d want to see.
‘We think this scenario is quite plausible.’