A virus expert from the World Health Organization said the coronavirus could be the ‘Disease X’ which experts have warned about.
The name is given to a future disease which could break out among humans and wreak havoc across the world.
The coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, has infected around 80,000 people in the two months since it emerged at an animal market in Wuhan, China in December.
It has killed more than 2,600 and is capable of causing severe lung damage and triggering multiple organ failure, mainly among old or sickly patients.
Dr Marion Koopmans, a virologist for the WHO, said: ‘Whether it will be contained or not, this outbreak is rapidly becoming the first true pandemic challenge that fits the disease X category, listed to the WHO’s priority list of diseases for which we need to prepare in our current globalized society.’
He comments come less than six months after a report led by a former WHO official which warned a flu-like illness could kill up to 80million people if it broke out.
Experts said the COVID-19 coronavirus (illustrated) could become the next serious global disease outbreak, which has been given the name Disease X until it emerges
‘Initial resemblances with the SARS outbreak in terms of its origin, the disease associated with infection, and the ability to spread are clear.
‘But since 2003, global air travel has increased more than 10-fold, and the efforts needed to try to contain the epidemic are daunting.’
Disease X is described by the WHO as this: ‘Disease X represents the knowledge that a serious international epidemic could be caused by a pathogen currently unknown to cause human disease’.
It is listed on the global organisation’s list of top priorities for research and development, despite not yet existing.
Authorities and scientists around the world should, the WHO says, be prepared to have to work together to stop this mysterious new illness when it appears.
SARS and MERS – both close cousins of the COVID-19 virus – both appear on the top priorities list.
And others on the list include Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever (CCHF), Ebola, Lassa fever, the Nipah virus, Rift valley fever and Zika.
Dr Koopmans accused scientists and public health experts of ‘wasting precious time’ by not preparing for outbreaks of these diseases.
In her article she said: ‘In my birth town, we used to watch the rivers flood inevitably every winter, with some people losing their homes because ‘‘that is what happens.’’
‘Now, there are modern flood barriers built to channel the river, based on forward-looking investments in the past decades.
‘Our ways of dealing with outbreaks is a mixture of modern floodwalls in some parts of the world while relying on sandbags in others. Needless to say where the weakest links will be.
‘Time will tell whether the consolidated efforts of the Chinese authorities and the international public health and research community will succeed.’
A report last year said there was a ‘real threat’ of a flu-like pandemic spreading around the world and killing millions of people.
The Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB), a team of health experts led by a former chief of the World Health Organization, Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, produced the report to try and spur world leaders into action.
‘The threat of a pandemic spreading around the globe is a real one,’ the group said.
‘A quick-moving pathogen has the potential to kill tens of millions of people, disrupt economies and destabilise national security.’
The group estimated that a pandemic could kill between 50 and 80million people and wipe out five per cent of the global economy.
It said national health systems, particularly those in poor countries, would collapse under the strain of a disease spreading widely and quickly.
And the report said that recommendations and warnings it made in an earlier report have been largely ignored by world leaders.
‘Many of the recommendations reviewed were poorly implemented, or not implemented at all, and serious gaps persist,’ the GPMB wrote.
‘For too long, we have allowed a cycle of panic and neglect when it comes to pandemics: we ramp up efforts when there is a serious threat, then quickly forget about them when the threat subsides. It is well past time to act.’
Dr Koopmans made the comments in an article in the scientific journal Cell.