Explained: What Is Disease X That Can Cause Next Pandemic

Disease X is once again making news with a UK health expert warning that it can cause another pandemic like Covid-19 and kill millions of people. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has also taken a note of it, adding Disease X in the list of “priority diseases” on its website. The global health body has categorised the unknown disease among Covid-19, Ebola, Lassa fever, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), Nipah and Zika, which have already caused widespread fatalities during outbreaks.

What is Disease X?

According to WHO website, the term “represents the knowledge that a serious international epidemic could be caused by a pathogen currently unknown to cause human disease”.

It could be a new agent – a virus, a bacterium or fungus – without any known treatments.

Is this a new disease?

The Lancet said that WHO formally started using the term in 2018, which represents the next unknown disease of epidemic potential.

Experts have called for research to identify that next pathogen that can cause another pandemic.

WHO’s R&D blueprint

The global health body is working with scientists in developing customisable formula for creating vaccines. Then, when an outbreak happens, they can sequence the unique genetics of the virus causing the disease and plug the correct sequence into the already-developed platform to create a new vaccine.

The R&D Blueprint was born as a result of the Ebola emergency in West Africa which began in March 2014.

Other variants that can cause another pandemic

In August, US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said that it was tracking a new, highly mutated lineage of the virus that causes Covid-19.

The lineage is named BA.2.86, and has been detected in the United States, Denmark and Israel, the CDC said.

The WHO has already classified BA.2.86 as a “variant under monitoring” due to the large number of mutations it carries.