Study: ‘Climate Change’ May Lead to 15,000 Cases of Mammal-to-Mammal Virus Transmission

A study in the journal Nature claims that so-called climate change will cause some 15,000 cases of mammals transmitting viruses to other mammals — including animal to human — by 2070.

Without mentioning Wuhan or China, the journal study and press release warn that bats will be one of the major means of transmission. Some researchers believe that the coronavirus pandemic started when the virus skipped from the flying mammals or some other species to people in a process called “zoonotic transmission.”

The summary of the study says, in part:

The research predicts that much of the new virus transmission will happen when species meet for the first time as they move to cooler locales because of rising temperatures. And it projects that this will occur most often in species-rich ecosystems at high elevations, particularly areas of Africa and Asia, and in areas that are densely populated by humans, including Africa’s Sahel region, India and Indonesia. Assuming that the planet warms by no more than 2 °C above pre-industrial temperatures this century — a future predicted by some climate analyses — the number of first-time meetings between species will double by 2070, creating virus-transmission hotspots, the study says.

[Gregory Albery, a disease ecologist at Georgetown] and one of his co-authors, Colin Carlson, a global-change biologist also at Georgetown University, say that even though some increase in disease transmission is inevitable, that is no excuse for inaction. The researchers call on governments and the international community to improve the monitoring and surveillance of wild animals and zoonotic diseases, particularly in future hotspots such as southeast Asia. Improving health infrastructure is also essential, they say.

The study is “a critical first step in understanding the future risk of climate and land-use change on the next pandemic”, says Kate Jones, who models interactions between ecosystems and human health at University College London.

But the study also includes caveats about its predictions, including the researchers having to make assumptions about the relocation of species because of “climate change,” and the fact that predicting how mammals would adapt to a new location or how they would physically cross some barriers, “is difficult to predict.”

Jones also expressed some skepticism.

“Predicting the risk of viral jumps from mammals into humans is more tricky, as these spillovers take place in a complex ecological and human socio-economic environment,” Jones said.

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