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Scientists in Marseille, France have issued a warning in which they claim a “zombie virus” that has been frozen for over 30,000 years in Siberia could cause another pandemic.
Increased human activity in the region combined with global warming could result in the thawing of Arctic permafrost, releasing that ancient virus known as Pithovirus sibericum, the Guardian reports.
“At the moment, analyses of pandemic threats focus on diseases that might emerge in southern regions and then spread north,” said geneticist Jean-Michel Claverie of the Information Genomique et Structurale (IGS-CNRS) laboratory at Aix-Marseille University.
“By contrast, little attention has been given to an outbreak that might emerge in the far north and then travel south – and that is an oversight, I believe. There are viruses up there that have the potential to infect humans and start a new disease outbreak.”
Virologist Marion Koopmans of the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam echoed Claverie’s concerns.
“If you look at the history of epidemic outbreaks, one of the key drivers has been change in land use,” she said. “Nipah virus was spread by fruit bats who were driven from their habitats by humans. Similarly, monkeypox has been linked to the spread of urbanisation in Africa. And that is what we are about to witness in the Arctic: a complete change in land use, and that could be dangerous, as we have seen elsewhere.”
Another concern, according to Claverie, is the fact that “our immune systems may have never been in contact with some of those microbes.”
“The scenario of an unknown virus once infecting a Neanderthal coming back at us, although unlikely, has become a real possibility,” he added.
This particular “zombie virus” was discovered last year under the ice of a frozen lake in Russia for 48,500 years – a new world record.
Following that report, it was stated that another “zombie virus” that was discovered had been given the name Pandoravirus yedoma.
The team behind that research, led by microbiologist Jean-Marie Alempic of the French National Centre for Scientific Research, claimed to have found 13 previously unseen pathogens among the nearly two dozen viruses they revived. Nine new viruses they unearthed were at that time believed to be tens of thousands of years old.
In 2020, scientists claimed that a real-life zombie outbreak could actually happen thanks to a parasite many people already have called Toxoplasmosa gondii.
This latest report is the second time in the past seven days that topic of “zombies” has been in the news.
Last week, in an unrelated story, news surfaced about a drug made with human bones that turns users into “zombies” and is killing a dozen people every week.
It is believed that around one million people in countries across West Africa are addicted to this “zombie” drug.