As of: January 31, 2024, 4:53 a.m
By: Bjarne Kommnick
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Researchers have reactivated 50,000-year-old “zombie viruses.”
Now she and Health Minister Lauterbach are warning of a threat to humans.
Paris – The coronavirus is currently dominating in Germany.
Still.
However, the RS virus poses a new threat to people's health - which is why there are currently so many infections with RS viruses.
In addition to babies, there is another group that is particularly affected by the RS virus.
To date, doctors have neither the coronavirus, in which the omicron variant BQ.1.1 dominates, nor the RS virus completely under control - and the next trouble in the form of viruses is already looming.
Scientists from the French “Centre national de la recherche scientiffique” have succeeded in detecting and reactivating 13 previously unknown virus types.
The pathogens would therefore come from the permafrost and are said to have survived there for 50,000 years or longer.
The research team has published the results in a study as a preliminary publication on the
biorxiv
internet platform and, like Health Minister Karl Lauterbach, is now warning of a potential danger to humanity.
Research organization |
Center national de la recherche scientifique |
Headquarters |
Paris |
founding |
October 19, 1939 |
founder |
Francis Perrin |
After the RS virus and Omicron BQ.1.1, now “zombie viruses”: Scientists have decided – viruses are now a danger to people
So far, researchers have “wrongly” assumed that these so-called “zombie viruses”, unlike the RS virus and Corona with sub-variants such as Omicron BQ.1.1 and XBB, would not pose a danger to people, as the study states .
However, this view has now changed.
The previously unknown pathogens came from frozen animal carcasses from a mammoth and a wolf in eastern Russia, as
stern.de
had previously reported - and, according to scientists, now pose a threat to people's health.
Thanks to researchers and also due to climate change, frozen animals are being uncovered from the permafrost.
These could contain dangerous “zombie viruses”.
© imago
The authors of the study on the “zombie viruses” discovered in permafrost explain: “A quarter of the Northern Hemisphere is covered by permanently frozen ground called permafrost.
“Due to global warming, irreversibly thawing permafrost is releasing organic material that has been frozen for up to a million years.”
The pathogens could be preserved in the ice and thus survive for that time and beyond.
After Omicron BQ.1.1 and RS viruses: Researchers discover still unknown viruses - climate change releases pathogens in the permafrost
Among the pathogens researched is what the research team calls the Pandora virus: The pathogen is so large that it can be detected with a normal light microscope - i.e. a kind of giant virus.
According to the researchers, there could still be countless unknown viruses in permafrost around the world that could gradually be released due to climate change.
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Some of these could also be diseases that are transmitted to humans and can therefore be “potentially infectious”.
Studies from 2014 on the so-called Pithovirus and on the Mollivirus from 2015 incorrectly stated that such events were extremely rare and that “zombie viruses” did not pose a threat to public health.
However, according to the latest study, this finding has been refuted.
The particular danger lies in the fact that none of the pathogens discovered would match the DNA strands of viruses known today.
This would make treatment or the development of an antidote much more difficult because it could not be developed based on an already known disease.
Not just a warning at Omicron BQ.1.1: Health Minister Karl Lauterbach warns of “zombie viruses”
Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach, who wants to spend 60 million euros on a corona awareness campaign, is now publicly warning about “zombie viruses”.
Lauterbach wrote on Twitter: “The permafrost is thawing due to climate change.
The thawed carcasses contain viruses that are more than 10,000 years old.
This is also an example of how we can build on the chain of first climate change, then zoonosis, then outbreak, then pandemic.”
According to
spektrum.de
, the earth's permafrost areas are located particularly in Canada, Siberia, but also in high mountains and are among the regions most globally influenced by climate change.
In recent years, researchers have observed huge holes opening on the ground, methane bubbles escaping or Arctic lakes shrinking.