Disease X vs Covid 19

31^st December 2019, there was a day of hope because the next day is the 1^st day of 2020. But this wasn’t the case for Chinese doctors, a patient came who has an undetected disease. All doctors were confused because his symptoms were very similar to those of the coronavirus family disease. They already faced the horrible of Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus (SARSr-CoV or SARS-CoV) is a species of coronavirus that infects humans, bats, and certain other mammals, and  Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) is a viral respiratory disease caused by a novel coronavirus (Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, or MERS‐CoV). By the time they know the correct information about it, everything that should have happened is over. That’s not their fault. That’s the danger of a virus.

 After a month the virus became a pandemic. It is difficult to say how devastated the virus was. A lot of people thought that this is the disease X but tests showed that this was not the case before work was over. Disease X is so dangerous than Covid 19.    

What is Disease X?

Disease X is a placeholder name that was adopted by the World Health Organization (WHO) in February 2018 on their shortlist of blueprint priority diseases to represent a hypothetical, unknown pathogen that could cause a future epidemic.

Professor Jean-Jacques Muyembe Tamfum, the doctor who discovered Ebola warned that a fresh set of deadly viruses will hit mankind as he fears Disease X which could be as fast-spreading as the COVID-19, and as deadly as the Ebola virus, reports CNN.

The average Ebola case fatality rate is around 50% and Covid-19 has 1-1.5 R rate, it means an R of 1.5 would see 100 people infect 150, who would, in turn, infect 225, who would infect 338. According to that disease X can massacre about half of the world. That will become the darkest period of the earth.

Today it’s probably in a forest somewhere miles from the nearest city, but that can change quickly. It’s estimated that a respiratory virus similar to the flu could reach all major global capitals within 60 days. It’s our expertise and multidisciplinary approach that stands between you and the next pandemic.

Disease X patient zero

Patient zero used to refer to the person identified as the first carrier of a communicable disease in an outbreak of related cases.  

A few months ago, a patient came by sowing early symptoms of hemorrhagic fever, the patient sits quietly on her bed, wrangling two toddlers desperate to flee the cell-like hospital room in Ingenta, a remote town in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). She was tested for Ebola and even coronavirus, but all her test reports came out to be negative. This new infection could be more fateful than Ebola and Covid-19, Prof. Tamfum said. His statement is since doing round in world media, raising several questions if this "Disease X" is indeed a news disease. But, you already know the answer by now.

Prof. Tamfum also cautioned that many more zoonotic diseases, specifically those that get transmitted from animals to humans, could arise in the future. He stated that diseases -- namely influenza, rabies, and yellow fever -- have all jumped from animals to humans. These "occurrences are common and could lead to epidemics and pandemics in the future", he said.

That is our luck but one-day disease x will be true. Although it true, the situation will be so dangerous. So I hope, it won't be so. But we can’t escape from nature, we should prepare for it always.

Can we discover

 

diseases X?

There are 1.67 million unknown viruses on this planet. Using our best estimates, anywhere between 631,000 and 827,000 of those have the ability to infect people. Scientists currently know of only 263 viruses that can infect people, which means that we know almost nothing about 99.96 percent of potential pandemic threats.

We know which species are most likely to be carrying Disease X. We know the viral families to which Disease X is most likely to belong and, therefore, which known viruses are likely to be similar. Thanks to our hotspots map of global pandemic risk, we know the parts of the world where Disease X is most likely to make the jump to people.

EcoHealth Alliance is committed to the Global Virome Project, a visionary undertaking that seeks to find and study the vast majority of the world’s 1.67 million unknown viruses. The hope is that we can learn everything to know about Disease X before it strikes. According to a paper published in Science by many of the Global Virome Project’s architects–including EcoHealth Alliance President Dr. Peter Daszak–in just 10 years we could discover 71 percent of those undiscovered viruses.

Therefore sometimes scientists can be discovered disease x before it spread around the world. But it won't be the end of potential pandemic threats. Because the environment has something that the average mind doesn't understand. 

More details- https://www.ecohealthalliance.org/2018/03/disease-x

In addition to Disease X, other viruses -- some of them now-well-known deadly viruses -- on WHO's current priority list are:

WHO priority viral diseases
 

COVID-19

• Fatality rate - Around 2-3%
• Patient zero -  Wuhan, China, in December 2019
• Symptoms - Fever, cough, fatigue, shortness of breath, loss of taste or smell; sometimes no symptoms at all
• Usual onset - 2–14 days (typically 5) from infection
• Duration - 5 days to 10+ months known
• Prevention - Hand washing, face coverings, quarantine, physical/social distancing
• Frequency - 108,230,119 confirmed cases(13/2/2021)
• Deaths -  2,384,001(13/2/2021)
  
  

Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever

• Fatality rate- Between 10% and 40%
• Patient zero -  In the 1940s
• Symptoms - Fever, muscle pains, headache, vomiting, diarrhea, bleeding into the skin
• Usual onset - Rapid
• Duration - Two weeks
• Treatment - supportive care, ribavirin
• Other - In 2013 Iran, Russia, Turkey, and Uzbekistan documented more than fifty cases
  
  

Ebola virus 

• Fatality rate - Between 25% and 90
• Patient Zero - In 1976, in two simultaneous outbreaks: one in Nzara (a town in South Sudan) and the other in Yambuku (the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
• Symptoms - Fever, sore throat, muscular pain, headaches, diarrhea, bleeding
• Usual onset - Two days to three weeks post-exposure
• Causes - Ebola viruses spread by direct contact
• Other - December 2013 to January 2016, with 28,646 cases and 11,323 deaths
• Vaccine -  rVSV-ZEBOV (Ebola Zaire vaccine live) 
  
  
  

Marburg virus

• Fatality rate- Between 24% and 88%
• Patient zero- In 1967 in Germany
• Symptoms-Fever, weakness, myalgias
• Usual onset- 2-21 days after exposure
• Causes- Direct contact with bodily fluids of individuals infected with the virus
• Other - more than 80% in the 1998-2000 outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as in the 2005 outbreak in Angola, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). 
• There is no treatment
  
  

Lassa fever

• Fatality rate- 1% risk of death
• Patient zero- in 1969 from a case in the town of Lassa, in Borno State, Nigeria
• Symptoms - fever, headache, bleeding
• Usual onset- 1–3 weeks following exposure
• Causes- Exposure to rodents in West Africa
• Treatment- Supportive
• Frequency- 400,000 cases per year
• Deaths- 5,000 deaths per year
• There is currently no licensed vaccine for Lassa fever, but several potential vaccines are in development
  
  
  

MERS-CoV

• Fatality rate- Around 30%
• Patient zero-  In Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in April 2012
• Symptoms- fever, cough, shortness of breath
• Usual onset- 5 or 6 days after a person is exposed
• Duration- from 2 to 14 days
• Other- As of November 2019, 2,494 cases of MERS have been reported with 858 deaths
• No vaccine or specific treatment is currently available, however several MERS-CoV specific vaccines (MERS-CoV RBD)
  
  
  

SARS

• Fatality rate- 9.5% 
• Patient zero-  In June 2003
• Symptoms- Fever, persistent dry cough, headache, muscle pains, difficulty breathing
• Causes- close contact with infected persons
• Frequency- 8,098 cases
• Deaths- 774 known
• There is no cure or protective vaccine for SARS
  
  

Rift Valley fever

• Fatality rate- About 1%
• Patient zero-  Livestock in Rift Valley of Kenya in the early 1900s
• Symptoms- Fever, muscle pains, headaches
• Duration- Up to a week
• Causes- Phlebovirus spread by an infected animal or mosquito
• There is no specific treatment and medical efforts are supportive
• In Egypt in 1977–78, an estimated 200,000 people were infected and there were at least 594 deaths. In Kenya in 1998, the virus killed more than 400 people.
• In 2018, there was an outbreak in Kenya. In 2018-2019, there was an outbreak in Mayotte
  
  

Zika

• Fatality rate- 8.3%
• Patient Zero- In Africa in 1947
• Symptoms- Fever, red eyes, joint pain, headache, maculopapular rash, Sometimes none
• Duration- Short-term
• Causes- Zika virus mainly spread by mosquitoes, can also be sexually transmitted
• Treatment- Supportive care, Generally not needed in mild cases
• Mosquito-borne Zika virus is suspected to be the cause of 2,400 possible cases of microcephaly and 29 infant deaths in Brazil in 2015
• There is no specific medicine or vaccine for the Zika virus
  
  

Nipah and henipaviral diseases

• The Nipah virus (NiV) is a type of RNA virus in the genus Henipavirus
• Fatality rate- 50 to 75% 
• Patient Zero- In 1998  in Malaysia
• Symptoms- None, fever, cough, headache, confusion
• Duration- 5 to 14 days after exposure
• Causes- spread by direct contact
• Treatment- there is neither vaccine nor specific treatment
• 701 human cases (1998 to May 2018)
• In May 2018, an outbreak of the disease caused 17 deaths in the Indian state of Kerala

Other deadliest viral   

diseases 

Rabies

• Rabies is a vaccine-preventable viral disease
• Fatality rate-  Between 95%-100% 
• Patient Zero- Rabies has been known since around 2000 BC. The first written record of rabies is in the Mesopotamian Codex of Eshnunna (circa 1930 BC), New World occurring in Boston in 1768
• Symptoms- Fever, fear of water, confusion, excessive salivation, hallucinations, trouble sleeping, paralysis, coma
• Duration- The period between infection and the first symptoms (incubation period) is typically 1–3 months in humans, Death usually occurs 2 to 10 days after first symptoms
• Causes- spread by direct contact
• Treatment- the vaccine was developed in 1885 by Louis Pasteur and Émile Roux
• Death- 56,000 per year
• In 2010, an estimated 26,000 people died from rabies, down from 54,000 in 1990
  
  
  

HIV/AIDS

• In the modern world, the deadliest virus of all may be HIV. "It is still the one that is the biggest killer," said Dr. Amesh Adalja
• Fatality rate- The study, published in CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, shows that from 2010 to 2017, the age-adjusted HIV-related death rate (the number of HIV-related deaths per 1,000 people with HIV) fell from 9.1 to 4.7, a decline of 48%.
• Patient Zero- In 1981 in the United States
• Symptoms- In the first few weeks after initial infection people may experience no symptoms or an influenza-like illness including fever, headache, rash, or sore throat.
• Duration- Lifetime
• Causes- HIV can be transmitted via the exchange of a variety of body fluids from infected people, such as blood, breast milk, semen, and vaginal secretions. HIV can also be transmitted from a mother to her child during pregnancy and delivery
• Death- almost 33 million lives
• An estimated 38.0 million people were living with HIV at the end of 2019
• In 2019, 68% of adults and 53% of children living with HIV globally
• Treatment- composed of a combination of 3 or more ARV drugs but Current ART does not cure HIV infection
  
  More details- https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/hiv-aids
  
  

Dengue

• Fatality rate- Dengue fever is typically a self-limited disease with a mortality rate of less than 1% when detected early and with access to proper medical care. When treated, severe dengue has a mortality rate of 2%-5%, but, when left untreated, the mortality rate is as high as 20%.
• Patient Zero- In 1906, transmission by the Aedes mosquitos was confirmed and This severe form of the disease was first reported in the Philippines in 1953; by the 1970s
• Symptoms- Fever, headache, muscle and joint pain, rash
• Usual onset- 3–14 days after exposure
• Duration- 2–7 days
• Causes- Dengue virus by Aedes mosquitos
• Frequency- 390 million per year
• Deaths- ~40,000  per year
• Treatment- Supportive care, intravenous fluids, blood transfusions
• Up to 40% of the world's population now lives in areas where dengue is endemic.
  
  

Influenza

• Fatality rate- For seasonal influenza, mortality is usually well below 0.1%
• Patient Zero-  first influenza pandemic occurred around 6000 BC in China
• Symptoms- Fever, runny nose, sore throat, muscle and joint pain, headache, coughing, feeling tired
• Usual onset- One to four days after exposure
• Duration- ~1 week
• Causes- close contact with infected persons and the airborne route (when someone inhales the aerosols produced by an infected person coughing, sneezing, or spitting) and through hand-to-eye, hand-to-nose, or hand-to-mouth transmission, either from contaminated surfaces or from direct personal contact such as a handshake
• Treatment- Neuraminidase inhibitors such as oseltamivir
• Frequency- 3–5 million severe cases per year
• Deaths- Up to 650,000 respiratory deaths per year
• The influenza vaccine is recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) for high-risk groups.
• The most deadly flu pandemic, sometimes called the Spanish flu, began in 1918 and sickened up to 40% of the world's population, killing an estimated 50 million people.