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Clade X virus can kill 900 million people across globe if not checked, says study

Clade X virus can kill 900 million people across globe if not checked, says study

Clade X virus, a newly found pathogen has pandemic potential and can kill 400 million people across the world, finds the Johns Hopkins Center of Health Security.

Written by Sreemoyee Chatterjee |Updated : July 30, 2018 2:24 PM IST

Clade X virus could be the next pandemic scare and the world is not prepared to face it, showed studies conducted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. With no vaccination and no drugs to cure it yet, Clade X can kill 900 million people across the globe covering about 10% of the world's population.

More than 400 positive cases and 50 deaths have been reported since the outbreak of the virus in the last few months. Frankfurt, Germany and Caracas, Venezuela have been worst hit. However, doctors say, if we fail to come up with a vaccine against Clade X, the global health will be at stake and the virus will emerge as a killer disease for the entire world.

Fever, cough and confusion are the key symptoms of this virus. While it initially seemed that the virus was a new type of parainfluenza virus belonging to the family of respiratory viruses, scientists were not able to identify where the virus fit in the parainfluenza clan. Hence, they isolated it as a new pathogen called parainfluenza Clade X.

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This virus causes encephalitis, swelling in the brain that can make a patient fall into fatal coma. While it appeared to spread through coughing, the virus took a week for the patients to show severe symptoms of the condition.

In order to create a real time scenario and test how well the policy makers and the government are armed to face an outbreak of Clade X, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security has come up with a simulation that revealed the world does not have adequate ways to deal with such an emergency that can prove pandemic for the world.

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