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Coronavirus and beyond: emerging disease outbreaks

02 April 2020
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How can we predict, detect and tackle future outbreaks of emerging diseases? Image credit - Unsplash/Tedward Quinn

With the world in the grip of the coronavirus pandemic, in April Horizon takes a step back to look at some of the challenges around sudden outbreaks of emerging diseases. We speak to virologist Prof. Marion Koopmans about the likelihood of future outbreaks of new diseases, what causes them and how to spot them before they appear. We speak to scientists who are helping to develop tests for Covid-19 to understand the challenges in coming up with an accurate and detailed diagnostic test for an entirely new disease. We talk to people working on coronavirus treatments about how to shorten the normally lengthy process of drug development. And we look into why diseases suddenly jump from animals, such as bats, into humans and the particular challenges of spotting and responding to these types of outbreaks.

Researchers have found two different virus populations in the throat and lungs of coronavirus patients, a whole new type of virus behaviour. Image credit - pixnio.com/Darko Stojanovic, licenced under CC0
health | coronavirus outbreak
20 April 2020

‘I don’t see any other way out’: Diagnostic testing and smartphone contact tracing to beat pandemic

What makes the Covid-19 pandemic so difficult to contain? Silent transmission by asymptomatic patients is partly responsible, but research emerging from Germany suggests the SARS-CoV-2 virus has developed a second impressive strategy for ensuring its success: the ability to establish two separate communities within a host – the first in the throat, the second in the lungs. Early colonisation of the throat is responsible for the dangerous lag between a person being infectious and the onset of symptoms.

The average drug takes 12 years before it’s approved for widespread use. Researchers are using supercomputers to screen abandoned drugs that are safe to use to see if they can work for coronavirus. Image credit - Rawpixel/licenced under CC0
coronavirus outbreak | health
14 April 2020

Repurposing drugs and networks can help find outbreak treatments against the clock

A vaccine is likely to take at least a year. A new drug could be a decade away. Even with the world’s resources focused, treatments against a new disease are difficult to create from scratch. However, repurposing existing drugs for other conditions could provide a much-needed shortcut.

Scientists hope a new pipeline will be able to churn out remedies for any newly emerging virus. Image credit - Unsplash/ Maksym Kaharlytskyi, licenced under CC0
coronavirus outbreak | health
07 April 2020

Studying animal coronavirus defences is opening route to human treatments

A team that has spent the last five years developing a pipeline of technologies that can churn out a remedy for almost any newly emerging virus may have treatments ready for safety trials on Covid-19 patients by the end of the year. 

Habitat loss such as forest clearing or mining operations can increase the chance of a disease jumping from animals to humans, says Prof. Koopmans. Image credit - M.P.G. Koopmans, Erasmus MC 2020
coronavirus outbreak | interview | health
02 April 2020

Q&A: We have to rethink disease detection to get ahead of the outbreak after coronavirus

We know that outbreaks like coronavirus will become more common in the future and tackling them is the Apollo programme of our time, according to Professor Marion Koopmans, head of the viroscience department at Erasmus University Medical Centre in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.