Deadly disease-causing organisms from pathogen families that include bird flu, plague and Ebola pose a threat to health in the UK and should be prioritised for research, government experts have said.
The first tool of its kind from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) lists 24 types of viruses and bacteria where a lack of vaccines, tests and treatment, changes due to the climate crisis or growing drug resistance pose a biosecurity risk.
The pathogen families on the list cause many diseases not currently seen in the UK. However, climate change could change how and where they spread, said Dr Isabel Oliver, UKHSA’s chief scientific officer, while a large outbreak overseas could have “major impacts globally, including socioeconomic impacts”.
Viruses in the Filoviridae family include the Marburg and Ebola haemorrhagic fevers, while Flaviviridae include mosquito-borne viruses dengue and Zika. Bacteria families highlighted include those home to Yersinia pestis, which causes plague, and Bacillus anthracis, which causes Anthrax.
Others listed include the Coronaviridae family, which includes Covid-19, and the Orthomyxoviridae family which includes avian influenza.
Oliver said UKHSA’s scientists had considered “not just the fact that some of these families have got high potential to cause pandemics or epidemics, but also where there are currently gaps in the availability of either diagnostics, vaccines and therapeutics, or where there are evolving and growing changes around antimicrobial resistance, or where there is a significant sensitivity to climate change, that might mean that this threat evolves or changes more rapidly”.
She said one of UKHSA’s concerns, reflected in the tool, was “the change in the distribution of mosquitoes and ticks that can carry viruses that cause adverse health effects to humans” linked to climate and environmental change.
The document, which will be updated regularly, does not indicate which pathogens UKHSA considers most likely to cause the next pandemic, Oliver stressed, but those most in need of increased scientific investment and study. She said it would be used in conversations with the scientific community “to help ensure that investment is focused to where it can have the biggest impact”.
Some diseases highlighted, including the Caliciviridae family member norovirus, already pose a “high” domestic burden in the UK, but have no specific treatment or vaccine available.
The first report from the UK Covid inquiry found that prior to 2020 there had been too much focus on the risk of an influenza pandemic, with officials then taking too long to adjust to the threat from a different type of virus.
The Paramyxoviridae family – which includes measles, as well as Nipah virus – is among those highlighted as a concern.
Mark Woolhouse, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, said he agreed with the assessment: “A novel measles-like virus would pose a threat far worse than Covid. Such a virus would have a much higher R number [indicating how contagious an infectious disease is] than the original variants of Covid – making it impossible to control by even the strictest lockdown. It would also be considerably more deadly, and (unlike Covid) it would be a threat to children. This is the kind of pandemic that public health agencies around the world are most concerned about.
“That said, there are many potential kinds of novel pandemic threats – so-called Disease X – and the UKHSA report is a timely reminder that we should not put all our eggs in one basket.”
