Why China’s top Covid expert is studying climate change to prepare for the next global pandemic

He has published hundreds of articles in the field of public health and infectious diseases. But he is now embarking on a new initiative to tackle the intersection of two growing threats: climate change and infectious diseases.

Research examining this relationship “will become a growing priority globally,” he said.

As the planet’s climate changes, particularly with the expansion of the tropics, the way pathogens evolve and mutate also changes.

A study published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres in 2020 found that ocean surface warming in the subtropics was widening the width of the tropics.

“It expanded from the south – the more tropical areas – to the north, and now it has also started to extend to the Yangtze River basin. So now we can also detect dengue in the Yangtze River basin,” Zhang said.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has said that in the coming decades, climate change will affect the spread of vector-borne diseases like malaria due to changes in global temperatures and precipitation.

There is a hypothesis that the Covid-19 pandemic spread to humans from bats, whose habitats are also expanding.

“So the work we’re doing now is really about the next pandemic. »

But countries will need more data if they are to work together to create global disease management agreements and strategies to quickly respond to another global pathogen.

As director of the Shanghai Sci-Tech Inno Centre, Zhang signed a memorandum of understanding with the University of Hong Kong (HKU) to work towards this goal during the annual Pujiang Innovation Forum in Hong Kong. Kong at the end of April.

Under the project, experts in climate change, public health, infectious disease control and public policy will be brought together to conduct research at HKU’s Center on Contemporary China and the World (CCCW).

Resident and non-resident experts will “pursue original research, establish regular monitoring systems, and provide platforms for public policy debate,” according to the CCCW.

“Through this platform, infectious disease experts and microbiologists can work with environmental experts and climate experts to conduct in-depth research on climate change and infectious diseases together,” Zhang said.

While Zhang and other mainland experts will begin their work alongside Hong Kong experts, preparing for the next pandemic will need to be a collective effort for researchers around the world.

It will require science “from different angles and at different levels” to provide as much evidence as possible that policy experts and governments can use when developing disease management strategies.

As part of the work with CCCW, an information sharing platform will be created “so that we scientists have systems that we can use to communicate,” Zhang said.

The work scientists do today will be guided by research conducted over the past few years since the coronavirus pandemic.

Beyond preparing to manage the spread of future pathogens, scientists are also concerned about how climate change will affect treatments for infected patients.

Antimicrobial resistance – when bacteria, parasites, viruses and fungi develop resistance to drugs designed to kill them – is another growing challenge.

Zhang said that in 2019, 1.27 million people died directly due to antibiotic resistance worldwide.

“One issue that scientists around the world agree on is that by 2050, 10 million people will die every year because of drug resistance,” Zhang said. This is equivalent to the number of people who die from cancer each year.

In the past, research into drug resistance was divided between clinicians studying how to treat it and pharmacologists trying to make new antibiotics.

“But we have now found that the emergence of drug resistance is faster than the emergence of antibiotics,” Zhang said.

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Although research into possible links between climate change and drug resistance is “currently lacking,” expanding the area should be an important part of pandemic preparedness, he said.

One of the proposed strategies is One Health, an initiative that the WHO describes as an integrated global approach mobilizing different sectors of society to work together on issues such as managing global health threats.

This includes researchers, doctors, government officials, global organizations and global communities.

Although the world officially emerged from Covid-19 lockdown last year, Zhang said how the virus mutates and evolves “remains a big concern.”

“We will also observe how the coronavirus spreads from the natural reservoir to human society,” he said. This is due to the expansion of habitable zones for its vectors.

“This will have important implications for the future.”