Threat of outbreak from microbes trapped in permafrost for millennia raised by increased Siberian shipping activity
Humanity is facing a bizarre new pandemic threat, scientists have warned. Ancient viruses frozen in the Arctic permafrost could one day be released by Earth’s warming climate and unleash a major disease outbreak, they say.
Strains of these Methuselah microbes – or zombie viruses as they are also known – have already been isolated by researchers who have raised fears that a new global medical emergency could be triggered – not by an illness new to science but by a disease from the distant past.
As a result, scientists have begun planning an Arctic monitoring network that would pinpoint early cases of a disease caused by ancient micro-organisms. Additionally, it would provide quarantine and expert medical treatment for infected people in a bid to contain an outbreak, and prevent infected people from leaving the region.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Strains of these Methuselah microbes – or zombie viruses as they are also known – have already been isolated by researchers who have raised fears that a new global medical emergency could be triggered – not by an illness new to science but by a disease from the distant past.
“At the moment, analyses of pandemic threats focus on diseases that might emerge in southern regions and then spread north,” said geneticist Jean-Michel Claverie of Aix-Marseille University.
In 2014, Claverie led a team of scientists who isolated live viruses in Siberia and showed they could still infect single-cell organisms – even though they had been buried in permafrost for thousands of years.
“The crucial point about permafrost is that it is cold, dark and lacks oxygen, which is perfect for preserving biological material,” Claverie told the Observer last week.
The upper layers of the planet’s main reserves – in Canada, Siberia and Alaska – are melting as climate change affects the Arctic disproportionately.
For that reason, Claverie and others are working with UArctic, the University of the Arctic – an international educational network in the polar region – on plans to establish quarantine facilities and provide medical expertise that could pinpoint early cases and treat them locally to try to contain the infection.
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