Forget Covid, `Disease X’ is giving sleepless nights to world

United Kingdom is facing a serious threat of ‘Disease X’, a mysterious series of infections that can affect people of all age groups.

According to the World Health Organisation, “Disease X represents the knowledge that a serious international epidemic could be caused by a pathogen currently unknown to cause human disease.”

Professor Mark Woolhouse of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, told The Telegraph that the early 21st century had been a perfect storm for the emerging infectious diseases and everything is pointing towards the likelihood of more outbreaks.

Professor Jean-Jacques Muyembe Tamfum, who helped discover the Ebola virus in 1976, while speaking to CNN last year had warned of more zoonotic diseases, or those that jump from animals to humans, could arise.

On March 8, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the UN health agency had developed research roadmaps, target product profiles, and trial designs to evaluate tools for a set of priority diseases, including two coronaviruses and an unidentified disease called ‘Disease X’.

The UK is already battling the Monkeypox menace with 910 confirmed cases till June 23, Out of these, 873 cases have been detected in England, 26 in Scotland, three in Northern Ireland, and eight in Wales.

In March, the country reported a case of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever after a woman returned from central Asia, The Daily Mail reported. The United Kingdom has also been reporting cases of Lassa fever and bird flu in recent years.

“We’re living through a new pandemic area,” medical experts said, adding that the ‘Disease X’ could be just around the corner, The Mirror reported.