At the end of January 2020, Business Insider published a table with the largest viral outbreaks in recent times to make a comparison with the new coronavirus that originated in China, and which was collected by the Statista data portal.
At the time, the virus was still named 2019-nCoV, there were 11,871 people infected worldwide, and it had claimed 259 deaths . As of today, more than four months after the publication of this table, the disease renamed COVID-19 leaves a balance of more than eight million people infected in 188 countries and more than 400,000 deaths, although they have already been recovered nearly four million people.
The creators of this table used different sources: ScienceAlert; CDC; United Nations; China Global Television Network; Johns Hopkins University; Lancet; etc. The table does not include mosquito-borne viruses such as those that cause Zika and dengue fever.
During the past century, at least ten outbreaks originating from a zoonosis (from animals to humans) have spread. Ebola jumped about 40 years ago from bats to people in West Africa, as well as the Marburg virus, SARS, and MERS. In turn, the H7N9 and H5N9 avian flu were caused by jumping from infected poultry to people in Chinese markets.
Should we stigmatize bats and other animals for these epidemics? As we explained in this article, the problem is not the animals but our relationship with them: the illegal trafficking of species, the trade in live animal markets and the degradation of the habitats in which wild species live break the natural balance and They promote the passage of diseases to man. In addition, in the specific case of bats, they are animals that play an important ecological role and that provide us with many benefits to human society.
According to experts, as the world’s population grows, it will be easier for diseases to continue to spread. The more we are, the more we move, invading spaces and coming into contact with species that are reservoirs of viruses. “Infectious diseases will resurface and continue to emerge. I think it’s part of the world we live in now, “Eric Toner, a senior scientist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, explained at the time to Business Insider .
