Climate change could impact ecosystems in the Arctic, leading to the emergence of dangerous new viruses that could infect humans, including some “zombie” ones that have been sleeping for centuries, a top Russian official told RT.
The rapid melting of the Arctic permafrost is a “dangerous phenomenon,” said Nikolay Korchunov, a senior Russian official in the Arctic Council.
Thawing soil that has been deeply frozen for centuries, if not for millennia, could still contain “some viable spores of ‘zombie’ bacteria and viruses.”
Russia, which took leadership in the Arctic Council in May, considers this danger to be significant enough to initiate a biosafety project that would see the member states of the intergovernmental forum working together to “determine the number of viruses and their potential danger,” said Korchunov.
The Arctic Council is an intergovernmental forum made up of eight countries that have sovereignty over land within the Arctic Circle. Apart from Russia, it also includes the US, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Finland, and Sweden.
The centuries-old pathogens are not the only danger that can stem from the global warming effects in the Arctic. Climate change “affects the geography of migration routes as well as seasonality and the breeding grounds of wild birds, fish insects and other animals,” the Russian diplomat said.
Since the migration routes and breeding grounds of wild birds have changed, some viruses they are carrying “can undergo genetic recombination and turn into strains affecting humans,” Korchunov warned, adding that some bird species migrate annually while being the “main carriers” of pathogens such as Influenza A.
https://ift.tt/3p3xccO 18, 2021 at 03:00AM
from RT – Daily news
