Updated Dec 30, 2020 | 08:05 IST The reality is that an agglomeration of factors from anthropogenic encroachment to increased cross-border migration to global warming make future outbreaks caused by unknown pathogens a certainty. Representational image. | Photo Credit: AP Key Highlights An IPBES report notes that the COVID-19 pandemic is actually the sixth pandemic to have taken place in the last century since the Great Influenza Pandemic in 1918 Studies show that areas characterised by a rising degree of human pressure on wildlife and ecology had over 40 per cent of the world's most connected cities close to or in zones of likely zoonotic spillover