London, Europe Brief News- Climate change threatens to cause another pandemic by “dramatically increasing” risk of viruses jumping from animals to humans, a study has warned.
Wild animals relocating to new habitats in search of food are likely to spread viruses among each other and onto people, scientists said.
Researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC) predicted animals will increasingly move to more urban areas in search of food.
This, the study added, will increase the chances of viral transmission between animals, risking outbreaks of disease, such as the ongoing Covid pandemic.
The source of the ongoing pandemic is not definitively known but it is believed an infected bat may have passed the disease to the first human victim in Wuhan, China.
The mixing of unhealthy animals and humans at food markets has been linked to spreading disease.
Colin Carlson, assistant research professor at the Center for Global Health Science and Security at GUMC, Washington, US, likened the climate risk to that seen in food markets.
“The closest analogy is actually the risks we see in the wildlife trade,” he said.
“We worry about markets because bringing unhealthy animals together in unnatural combinations creates opportunities for this stepwise process of emergence – like how Sars jumped from bats to civets, then civets to people.
“But markets aren’t special anymore; in a changing climate, that kind of process will be the reality in nature just about everywhere.”
