Next pandemic? Amazon deforestation may spark new diseases

As farms expand into the Amazon rainforest, researchers say, felled trees and expanding pastures may open the way for new Brazilian exports beyond beef and soya beans: pandemic diseases. Changes in the Amazon are driving displaced species of animals, from bats to monkeys to mosquitoes, into new areas, while opening the region to arrivals of more savanna-adapted species, including rodents. Those shifts, combined with greater human interactions with animals as people move deeper into the forest, are increasing the chances of a virulent virus, bacteria or fungus jumping between species, said Adalberto Luis Val a researcher at the National Institute for Research in the Amazon (INPA), based in Manaus. Climate change, which is driving temperature and rainfall changes, adds to the risks, the biologist said. “There is a great concern because … there is a displacement of organisms. They try to adapt, face these new challenging scenarios by changing places,” Val told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview. In this file photo from 20015, hundreds of acres of former Amazon jungle destroyed by loggers and farmers lie next to virgin rainforest in Mato Grosso State, Brazil [File: Rickey Rogers/Reuters]The Evandro Chagas Institute, a public health research organisation in the city of Belem, has identified about 220 different types of viruses in the Amazon, 37 of which can cause diseases in humans and 15 of which have the potential to cause epidemics, said INPA biologist Val. They include a range of different encephalitis varieties as well as West Nile fever and rocio, a Brazilian virus from the same family that produces yellow fever and West Nile fever, he noted in an article published in May by the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. Val said he was especially concerned about arboviruses, which can be transmitted by insects such as the mosquitoes that carry dengue fever and Zika. A burning tract of the Amazon jungle is seen near Apui, Amazonas State, Brazil in August 2020 [File: Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters] ‘Spillover’ Cecilia Andreazzi, a researcher at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, a major public health institute in Brazil, said the current surge in deforestation and fires in the Amazon can lead to new meetings between species on the move – each a chance for an existing pathogen to transform or jump species. The ecologist maps existing infectious agents among Brazil’s animals and constructs mathematical models about how the country’s changing landscape “is influencing the structure of these interactions”. What she is looking for is likely “spillover” opportunities, when a pathogen in one species could start circulating in another, potentially creating a new disease – as appears to have happened in China with the virus that causes COVID-19, she said. style="width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; top: 0; bottom: 0; right: 0; left: 0;">