In late 2019, a vicious virus with pandemic potential somehow spilled over into humans, laying the way for one of the worst disease outbreaks in recent history. While COVID-19 has been dubbed a once-in-a-century pandemic by some, it s apparent 21st-century livestyles and humanity s broken relationship will make disease outbreaks increasingly common in the future. Where will the next virus spillover come from, though?
Scientists at the University of California, Davis have developed a new web application that ranks the great viral threats that currently lurk in wildlife but run the very risk of zoonotic spillover into humans and pandemic potential.
Known as SpillOver, the app is freely available. It’s the product of a recent study appearing in the journal PNAS that ranked the threat of 887 wildlife viruses using 32 risk factors, such as the environment it can be found in, its current host, and how it might interact with human behavior.
These viruses are the most likely to trigger the next pandemic, scientists predict
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There s A New App That Might Help Predict Which Viruses Could Cause The Next Pandemic
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Worried about a new pandemic? This app classifies the viruses most likely to jump to other species
This online tool ranks the scariest animal-borne viruses that either crossed or have the potential to cross species barriers.
Credit: Pixabay.
The COVID-19 pandemic caught the world off guard, showing just how woefully unprepared we are against spillovers of zoonotic viruses. But that doesn’t mean we weren’t warned. There are over 500,000 animal viruses that have the potential to cross to humans, and for decades, scientists have been calling the alarm that human activity is increasing the risk of spillover.
“It is highly likely that future SARS or MERS-like coronavirus outbreaks will originate from bats, and there is an increased probability that this will occur in China.” Sounds familiar? That’s the conclusion of a study published in early 2019 that was eerily prescient, and it’s not even the only study to come with this type of warning.
Credit: Terra Kelly, UC Davis
SARS-CoV-2 showed the world with devastating clarity the threat undetected viruses can pose to global public health. SpillOver, a new web application developed by scientists at the University of California, Davis, and contributed to by experts from all over the world, ranks the risk of wildlife-to-human spillover for newly-discovered viruses.
SpillOver is the first open-source risk assessment tool that evaluates wildlife viruses to estimate their zoonotic spillover and pandemic potential. It effectively creates a watchlist of newly-discovered viruses to help policymakers and health scientists prioritize them for further characterization, surveillance, and risk-reducing interventions.
The tool is linked to a study published in the journal PNAS, in which the authors identified the most relevant viral, host and environmental risk factors for virus spillover. Then the team ranked the risk from 887 wildlife viruses using data collected from a variety of so