After Covid 19, new disease ‘X’ threatens world

If you thought ‘X’ was the new name of only Twitter, then you might be proven wrong in the near future.

Hardly had the world come out of the devastating effects of Covid 19, which claimed millions of lives, when the threat of another deadly diseases, called ‘X’, started looming over the world.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has said that ‘X’ might induce another pandemic in the world which could be deadlier than Covid 19.

A UK based health expert, citing WHO, said that the new disease could be a virus or a bacterium or a fungus. There is no known treatment of the disease as of now.

The expert said "Let me put it this way: the 1918-19 flu pandemic killed at least 50 million people worldwide, twice as many as were killed in World War I. Today, we could expect a similar death toll from one of the many viruses that already exist."

She underlined the need for preparing for a mass vaccination drive and that too in double quick time.

What adds to the danger that looms over the world is that although the scientists have identified 25 virus families, it is feared that there could be more than one million undiscovered variants, which may be able to jump from one species to another.

"In a sense, we got lucky with Covid-19, despite the fact that it caused 20 million or more deaths across the world. The point is that the vast majority of people infected with the virus managed to recover... Imagine Disease X is as infectious as measles with the fatality rate of Ebola. Somewhere in the world, it's replicating, and sooner or later, somebody will start feeling sick," the expert remarked.

Interestingly the WHO first mentioned about Disease X on its website in May.