World leaders are gathering to discuss Disease X. Here’s what to know about the hypothetical pandemic.
li>Experts are actively learning from the COVID-19 experience to prepare for Disease X
World leaders are gathering to discuss Disease X. Here’s what to know about the hypothetical pandemic.
In 2022, the World Health Organization brought together 300 scientists to look into 25 virus families and bacteria to create a list of potential pathogens. Included on that list is Disease X, a hypothetical virus 20 times deadlier than COVID-19. The WHO says the virus “represents the knowledge that a serious international epidemic could be caused by [an unknown] pathogen.”
How are experts preparing for Disease X?
If we are unprepared, it is likely a disease of that scale could cause even more damage than we experienced with COVID-19, which has killed more than 7 million people, In line with the WHO. That’s why experts are proactively coming up with a plan of action to combat such a virus and prepare the health system if it were to emerge as a pandemic.
“If we did so poorly with something like COVID-19, you can imagine how poorly we would do with something like a 1918-level event,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, referring to the influenza pandemic of 1918 that killed an estimated 50 million people around the world.
