Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, the UN agency’s acting head of pandemic response, believes Europe will definitely face a new pandemic threat, most likely from the influenza virus.
A senior World Health Organisation (WHO) official said European countries must prepare because there is a “high risk” of a flu pandemic.
Maria Van Kerkhove, interim head of the WHO’s pandemic response, said it was “certain” that an influenza threat would hit the continent “in our lifetime,” adding that COVID-19 would not be the last pandemic Europe faces. Speaking on the WHO’s “Health in Europe” podcast, she said future threats could cause unprecedented carnage.
But the respected epidemiologist said that if the world had applied the lessons learned from Covid-19, “it wouldn’t have gotten this bad.” She explained: “For me, influenza is definitely going to happen because it’s so widespread. It infects many different species. There’s avian influenza, and there’s an opportunity for reassortment. [genetic changes to a virus that allow it to jump between species]There is a high possibility of an influenza virus pandemic occurring.
“That’s why we have a whole system in place to prepare for this. The challenge is, will we have a novel coronavirus pandemic – which is definitely an opportunity, given that SARS-CoV-2 caused a pandemic. The question is, will we have an arbovirus pandemic?” Arboviridae are infectious diseases transmitted through the bites of infectious insects. She added: “I’m not saying this to scare people who are listening, but for us, this is something we have to be prepared for.”
“So we have to think outside the box. Not only do we have to really prepare for known threats, but we also have to think outside the box for something different, like waterborne diseases. To me, pandemics are unfortunately part of what we’re going to have to deal with in our lifetime. I don’t think this will be the last pandemic that we’re going to deal with in our lifetime.”
Scientists have long assumed that avian influenza is the most likely candidate for a pandemic-causing virus because of the risk of recombination, when two viruses fuse to create a hybrid strain, while others argue that it could be “Disease X,” a hypothetical unknown pathogen that arises through bacterial or viral transmission from animals to humans.
The announcement comes as WHO laments the failure of world leaders to agree on a global response plan for future pandemics. After COVID-19 triggered once-unthinkable lockdowns, disrupted economies and claimed millions of lives, the World Health Organization and leaders around the world vowed to do better in future. In 2021, member states asked the UN health agency to oversee negotiations to determine how the world can better share scarce resources and stop future viruses from spreading globally.
Roland Dries, co-chair of the WHO’s negotiating committee, acknowledged on Friday that countries had failed to produce a draft. The WHO had hoped that a final draft of the treaty would be agreed upon at its annual meeting of health ministers, which begins on Monday in Geneva. “We are not where we hoped to be when we started this process,” he said, adding that it was important “for humanity” to reach an international agreement on how to respond to pandemics.
