- A study conducted by Reuters data analysis found that as more people encroach on bat habitat, the risk of viruses jumping from bats to humans is expected to increase.
- Viruses can be transferred from bats to humans through intermediary hosts, such as pigs, or through human contact with bat feces, blood, or saliva.
- Viruses from bats have been among the deadliest disease outbreaks of the past half decade, such as the coronavirus that has killed more than 7 million people so far.
For millennia, the bat virus lurked in the forests of West Africa, India, South America, and other parts of the world. But, invariably, they posed little threat to humanity.
No more, a new data analysis by Reuters found. Today, as more and more people encroach on bat habitats, bat-borne pathogens create an epidemiological minefield in 113 countries, where the risk is high that a virus will jump species and infect humans.
Bats have been linked to many deadly disease outbreaks over the past half century – including Covid-19 is global, which has killed at least 7 million people and has its roots in a family of bat-borne coronaviruses. While scientists are still trying to figure out how the virus came to infect humans, dozens of other outbreaks can be traced back to human incursions into bat-dense areas.
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To examine where the next pandemic might emerge, Reuters used two decades of outbreak and environmental data to identify the places on the planet most vulnerable to “zoonotic spillover” — the term for when a virus jumps between species. Viruses jump from bats to humans through an intermediary host, such as a pig, chimpanzee, or civet, or through human contact with bat urine, feces, blood, or saliva.
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Reuters reporters spoke to dozens of scientists, read extensive academic research and traveled to bat-rich countries around the world to learn how human destruction of wildlife is increasing pandemic risk. Our data analysis – the first of its kind – shows that a global economic system is colliding with nature and putting human health at risk, as bat-rich forests are cleared to make way for farms, mines, roads and other developments.
Here are the key takeaways from our tests:
* Reuters found More than 9 million square kilometers on Earth where conditions were suitable for a bat-borne virus to spread in 2020 could potentially trigger another pandemic. These regions, which we have termed “jump zones,” span the Earth, covering 6% of Earth’s land mass. These are mostly tropical areas rich in bats and undergoing rapid urbanization.
* About 1.8 billion people – more than one in five of us – lived in areas at high risk for spillover as of 2020. That’s 57% more people living in the jump zone than two decades ago, increasing the likelihood that a deadly bat virus could spread. Moreover, these people are living together, intensifying the possibility of a disease outbreak developing into a rapidly spreading global pandemic.
* Reuters analysis found high spillover risk in locales including China, where Covid-19 emerged; neighboring Laos, where scientists have identified the closest wildlife relatives to the virus responsible for the current epidemic; India, where half a billion people live in the rapidly-expanding jumpzone, is the most of any nation; And Brazil has the most land at risk of any country, as humans destroy the Amazon.
* The catalyst for outbreaks is not bat behavior, scientists say, but our own. The thirst for resources – iron ore, gold, cocoa and rubber, to name a few – is driving uncontrolled development of wild areas and increasing the risk of global epidemics through greater contact with animals, scientists say. The world’s jumpzones have lost 21% of their tree cover over the course of nearly two decades, double the global rate.
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* Pressure on once remote forests gives virus An opportunity to spread and change as they jump between animal species and eventually humans. In recent decades, the deadly Nipah virus has spread from Asian fruit bats to pigs and from pigs to humans. Nipah has recently been shown to be capable of directly infecting humans through contact with bat bodily fluids.
* Humanity is destroying important habitats before scientists have time to study them. Development not only brings people into close contact with pathogens that may have epidemic potential; It also uncovers secrets that nature may hold that could be valuable to science. For example, the ability of bats to survive multiple viruses, without succumbing to many that would be fatal to other mammals, could yield important knowledge for vaccines, drugs, or other innovations.
* Governments and corporations are doing little to assess risk. In bat-rich Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast and Ghana – where Reuters considers the epidemic risk to be the highest in the world – pending applications will double the area used for mining exploration and extraction, a total of 400,000 sq km. , an area larger than Germany. About one-third of that expansion will be in existing jump zones, where spillover risks are already high. Although these countries require mining companies to assess the potential environmental damage that new concessions may cause, neither company is required to carry out a spillover risk assessment.
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