Authorities have been warned about five virus families that could cause future pandemics. Here are snapshots of the diseases each can cause and why we should be worried.
Fruit bats are the main animal host of the nipah virus.
BTS-BotrosTravelSolutions / Pixabay
Bats have been the reservoir for recent disease outbreaks, including SARS and the current COVID-19 pandemic. But it’s human activity that allows the virus to cross over.
Paramedics bury a man who died of the Nipah virus in Kozhikode, southern India, in May 2018. There is no vaccine for the virus, which can cause raging fevers, convulsions and vomiting, and kills up to 75 per cent of people infected.
(AP Photo/K.Shijith)
As new viruses “jump” from wildlife to humans and we struggle with antimicrobial resistance and even climate change, a new interdisciplinary approach to human health might just save the day.
The Nipah virus in India is just one example of a viral outbreak in 2018.
PRAKASH ELAMAKKARA/EAP/AAP
It doesn’t just seem like the world is experiencing more viral infections than before – it’s a reality. And the way humans live today helps viruses thrive.
An historian reading the government White Paper on developing northern Australia will realise we’re actually heading all the way back to the 1890s.
andrew matthews/Flickr
The federal government’s recent White Paper on developing northern Australia has disturbing echoes of the 1890s, a time when unbridled capitalism and indentured labour developed the North.
Scientists worked with Hendra virus at the highest level of biosafety within CSIRO’s Australian Animal Health Laboratory.
CSIRO
Today we are launching Equivac® HeV, the world’s first commercially available Hendra vaccine for horses. This breakthrough is the culmination of a scientific journey that dates back to the emergence of…
The new Cedar virus is similar to Hendra and Nipah viruses but it does not cause illness in humans or animals.
AAP
Scientists have identified a new virus in Australian fruit bats. The Cedar virus – named after the suburb in the Gold Coast hinterland where it was first discovered – is part of the henipavirus family…
Bats appear have a much better symbiotic relationship with viruses than other mammal species.
CSIRO
In the Chinese zodiac, 2011 is the year of the rabbit but for those of us working on viruses from wildlife animals, it was much more like the year of the bat. In February, the deadly Nipah virus re-emerged…
Jude Law as Alan Krumwiede in the thriller “Contagion”.
Claudette Barius
Jesse Toe, WEHI (Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research)
One touch and you’re infected. By the next day your muscles ache, you have a fever and the beginnings of a headache. You don’t know it yet, but you only have a one in three chance of survival and you’ve…