The Zika virus and the Ebola virus have received a lot of attention in the media lately, but they’re unlikely to cause a global pandemic disaster, says a new report from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Maryland. Instead, the thing to watch out for are airborne viruses, including those related to the flu and the common cold, reveals the research.
Led by Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore, the study examined the characteristics of pandemic pathogens in order to understand what the next pandemic would look like.
Contrary to general expectations, Zika and Ebola — which spread through contact with bodily fluid and, in the case of Zika, mosquito bites — were not high on the list of possible threats.
The real danger comes from respiratory viruses, Adalja points out.
“We need to get serious about respiratory viruses,” he told LiveScience.
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