How Wildlife Vaccines Will Prevent The Next Human Pandemic

The coronavirus vaccines currently being injected into arms across the world are our escape route to normality. But keeping deadly viruses at bay and maintaining our freedoms in the future may require brand-new mass vaccination programmes that look very different to the ones currently taking place

- Andy Ridgway

The coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 that has dominated the news since early 2020 has something in common with other diseases that have hit the headlines in recent years. SARS-CoV-2, just like Ebola, HIV, and MERS before it, originated in wildlife before ‘spilling over’ into humans. SARS-CoV-2 currently appears to have originated in horseshoe bats and was potentially transferred to humans via an unknown species, possibly pangolins. But other so-called zoonotic diseases (illnesses that spread from animals to humans, and vice versa) originated in the likes of chimps, camels, and mice.

While the existence of zoonotic diseases has been known for decades, the coronavirus pandemic has brought into sharp focus how closely our health is connected to the health of the animal species with which we come into contact. “This pandemic is just a tragic wake-up call,” says epidemiologist Dr. Jonna Mazet at the University of California, Davis.

Mazet was the principal investigator on the PREDICT project, a $207m (£150m approx) global effort run from the US to build a clearer picture of the viruses lurking in wild animals that could spill over into humans and wreak havoc. From 2009 to 2019, the project’s scientists collected samples of animal blood, saliva, and dung from fields and forests in 30 countries. They found 940 virus species that hadn’t been previously identified, including 160 coronaviruses and one new Ebola virus that were previously unknown. But this may just be the tip of the iceberg. “We estimate there are probably about 500,000 viruses that could infect people that have not been characterized or detected by science,” says Mazet. Not all of these would cause disease, but it shows the scale of the problem.