Researchers have reactivated 50,000-year-old “zombie viruses.” Now she and Health Minister Lauterbach are warning of a threat to humans.
Paris – currently dominates Germany the coronavirus. Still. With the RS virus However, a new threat to people’s health is acute – that’s why there are currently so many infections with the RS viruses. In addition to babies iThere is another group particularly affected by the RS virus. Neither the coronavirus, in which the Omicron variant BQ.1.1 dominatesand that RS virus The doctors have so far had it completely under control – and the next trouble in the form of viruses is already looming.
Scientists from the French “Centre national de la recherche scientiffique” have succeeded in detecting and reactivating 13 previously unknown virus types. The pathogens would therefore come from the permafrost and are said to have survived there for 50,000 years or longer. The research team has published the results in a study as a preliminary publication on the internet platform biorxiv published and now warns, exactly how Health Minister Karl Lauterbachfrom a potential danger to humanity.
| Research organization | Center national de la recherche scientifique |
| Headquarters | Paris |
| founding | October 19, 1939 |
| founder | Francis Perrin |
After the RS virus and Omicron BQ.1.1, now “zombie viruses”: Scientists have decided – viruses are now a danger to people
So far, researchers have “wrongly” assumed that these so-called “zombie viruses” are different than that RS virus and Corona with sub-variants like Omicron BQ.1.1 and XBB would not pose a danger to people, as the study states. However, this view has now changed. The previously unknown pathogens would come from frozen animal carcasses from eastern Russia, such as a mammoth and a wolf stern.de had previously reported – and, according to scientists, now pose a threat to people’s health.
The authors of the study on the “zombie viruses” discovered in permafrost explain: “A quarter of the Northern Hemisphere is covered by permanently frozen ground called permafrost. “Due to global warming, irreversibly thawing permafrost is releasing organic material that has been frozen for up to a million years.” The pathogens could be preserved in the ice and thus survive for that time and beyond.
After Omicron BQ.1.1 and RS viruses: Researchers discover still unknown viruses – climate change releases pathogens in the permafrost
Among the pathogens researched is what the research team calls the Pandora virus: The pathogen is so large that it can be detected with a normal light microscope – i.e. a kind of giant virus. According to the researchers, there could still be countless unknown viruses in permafrost around the world that could gradually be released due to climate change.
Some of these could also be diseases that are transmitted to humans and can therefore be “potentially infectious”. Studies from 2014 on the so-called Pithovirus and on the Mollivirus from 2015 incorrectly stated that such events were extremely rare and that “zombie viruses” did not pose a threat to public health.
However, according to the latest study, this finding has been refuted. The particular danger lies in the fact that none of the pathogens discovered would match the DNA strands of viruses known today. This would make treatment or the development of an antidote much more difficult because it could not be developed based on an already known disease.
Not just a warning at Omicron BQ.1.1: Health Minister Karl Lauterbach warns of “zombie viruses”
Also Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach, who wants to spend 60 million euros on a Corona awareness campaign, now publicly warns about “zombie viruses”. Lauterbach wrote on Twitter: “The permafrost is thawing due to climate change. The thawed carcasses contain viruses that are more than 10,000 years old. This is also an example of how we can build on the chain of first climate change, then zoonosis, then outbreak, then pandemic.”
Loud spektrum.de The earth’s permafrost areas would be located particularly in Canada, Siberia, but also in high mountains and would be among the regions most globally influenced by climate change. In recent years, researchers have observed huge holes opening on the ground, methane bubbles escaping or Arctic lakes shrinking.