What is Disease X?

About Disease X

• It is referred to as a hypothetical pathogen or threat that can cause a major pandemic in future.
• It could be a new agent, a virus, a bacterium, or a fungus without any known treatment.
• The term coined by scientists and the World Health Organization could be any of the 25 families of viruses that have the capability to cause illness in people.
• Disease X was included in the WHO’s updated Blueprint list of diseases back in 2018.
• Scientists are of the opinion that Disease X could be 20 times more deadly than SARS-Covid virus that caused pandemic recently.
• It represents an illness which is currently unknown but could pose a serious microbial threat to humans in the future.

Q1) What is a pandemic?

A pandemic is an outbreak of infectious disease that occurs over a wide geographical area and that is of high prevalence. A pandemic generally affects a significant proportion of the world’s population, usually over the course of several months.

Source: The pandemic treaty can help the world brace for Disease X: WHO Director-General