The havoc wreaked by viruses just doesn’t seem to end. In another viral story, trending all over news channels and social media, zombie viruses that date almost 50,000 years back could potentially make a comeback due to the melting ice as a result of global warming. This information has been relayed by Jean-Michel Claverie, Professor of medicine and genomics, Aix-Marseille University School of Medicine, Marseille, France, who has been studying ‘giant viruses’ that lay dormantly frozen in the permafrost, a frozen layer of soil beneath the ground. First discovered in 2003 by Claverie, ‘giant viruses’ are named so because they are much bigger than typical viruses, and are visible under a regular light microscope.
Zombie Viruses Making A Comeback
In light of the still ongoing pandemic of COVID-19, and the recent chaos created due to the Disease X advisory, these giant viruses are raising alarm bells worldwide as they hint towards a sinister pandemic brewing under the surface of snow-clad regions of the Arctic tundra and the boreal forests of Alaska, Canada and Russia. Claverie warned that these viruses have the potential to endanger animal and human health in the near future, as the Arctic has warmed nearly four times faster than the globe since 1979.
Testing earth samples taken from Siberian permafrost to see whether any viral particles contained therein are still infectious, Claverie published his latest research on February 18, stating that he and his team have once again isolated several strains of ancient virus that could each infect cultured amoeba cells. One such sample he had presented in 2014, whose computer-enhanced photo is given below.
The fact that these amoeba-infecting viruses are still infectious after so long, indicates the potential of a deadly pandemic in the near future, Claverie said. He fears that news regarding such zombie viruses is being propagated as clickbait articles and not being taken seriously as a prospect that ancient viruses could come back to life if this level of climate change persists.
“We view these amoeba-infecting viruses as surrogates for all other possible viruses that might be in the permafrost. We see the traces of many, many, many other viruses. So we know they are there. We don’t know for sure that they are still alive. But our reasoning is that if the amoeba viruses are still alive, there is no reason why the other viruses will not be still alive, and capable of infecting their own hosts,” said Claverie.
This is a cause of concern because anything ranging from anthrax, and smallpox, to influenza pathogens, has been discovered in human and animal carcasses, exposed due to the melting permafrost. Currently, as per experts, human immunity is probably not efficient enough to defend against these ancient viruses, as our immune system develops in close contact with our surroundings and our exposure to them. However, “the risk is bound to increase in the context of global warming,” concluded Claverie, as he informed that due to warming temperatures, more and more people can shift to the arctic regions for business opportunities, increasing the chances of getting infected by the newly exposed diseases due to the melting permafrost.
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