A doctor has shared more about “disease X” – the potential cause of a future global pandemic. Named by the World Health Organisation (WHO), this disease represents the next hypothetical pathogen “lurking around the corner”.
In a video uploaded to social media platform TikTok, NHS doctor Suraj Kukadia explained more. Speaking to his more than 300,000 followers, he said: “What is disease X?
“Have you ever heard of it? It’s a term coined by the World Health Organisation, who imagine it as a big question mark on the global health map, symbolising the unknown infectious diseases that might just be lurking around the corner.
It was named in 2018, as part of a move to encourage international pandemic preparedness efforts.
It was thought that planning for the arrival of an unknown infectious disease could mean a quicker, more effective public health response.
Amesh Adalja, MD, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Centre for Health Security, explained more on the John Hopkins website.
The infectious disease physician said: “With disease X, we’re preparing for an unknown unknown. Disease X is a placeholder concept that refers to a pandemic pathogen that has not yet been characterised.
“Its purpose is to encourage proactive thinking about pathogens that could cause a pandemic. It represents a way to push people’s thinking forward so that they’re not wedded to lists of prior pandemic pathogens, like influenza.”
He added that it’s more likely to be a virus and one that can spread easily. “There are definitely characteristics that would be likely – not every pathogen can cause a pandemic,” Dr Adalja said.
“In general, a few things need to be present. One, it’s likely to be spread through respiration, because that’s more efficient for a pathogen.
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“It’s likely to be something that could spill over from an animal species into a human. Or it could be a human pathogen that develops new characteristics or changes its genetics in such a way that makes it more conducive to causing a pandemic.”
Speaking last year, Dr Adalja added that although we are “more prepared” now than we were ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are not “fully prepared”.
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