Experts revealed how a new virus discovered in the United States could trigger another pandemic.
Dr. David Dyjack, a public health expert at the National Environmental Health Association, told DailyMail.com that the recent identifying of the Camp Hill virus in shrews in Alabama could be “threatening to all mankind.”
“What concerns us in public health is we have this virus with [we believe] a very high mortality rate, and if it were to mutate and transmit to a human, and attack the kidneys, as we’ve seen in some animals, that could be particularly threatening to all of mankind,” Dyjack said.
The new virus belongs to a family of pathogens called henipaviruses, which includes the bat-borne Nipah virus that has a 70% death rate among infected patients. The identification in shrews raised fear that it could expand beyond animal reservoirs, leading to a massive outbreak, though it hasn’t yet been transmitted to humans.
Dr. Donald Burke, an epidemiologist who predicted the COVID-19 pandemic two decades prior to the 2020 outbreak, was less concerned, telling DailyMail.com that Cap Hill “isn’t likely to cause an epidemic.”
Researchers wrote in a report released last month that they were concerned about that “given the high case-fatality rates associated with henipaviruses,” detection of Camp Hill virus in North America “raises concerns about past and potential future spillover events,” but specified that more research was needed to determine whether Camp Hill virus threatened humans.
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