Pic: Economist
Faizel Patel – 05/08/2020
A researcher at the University of the Free State Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology Department says there are many warning signs indicating people worldwide, including South Africans, should prepare for more pandemics in the future.
The academics also believe that the current COVID-19, which has already infected more than 18-million people and killed around 700-thousand, is only a dress rehearsal for an even bigger pandemic.
Department researcher Professor Robert Bragg and Natural and Agricultural Sciences and Zoology assistant dean and entomology associate professor Aliza le Roux believe this is because of human’s interaction with animals, and not learning from previous pandemics.
Speaking to Radio Islam, Professor Bragg says mankind has been warned about the coming pandemics for many years, but people seem to want to listen only when they are in the midst of a pandemic”.
“There’s been sporadic serious pandemic, but they haven’t developed the massive human to human transmission that this COVID-19 has developed. We just need to think for example of SARS, the original SARS virus that started in China, that also started from the mistreatment of animals. This one was a Civet Cat.
Professor Brag says most of the pandemics have emerged from the mass and illegal consumption of meat.
“This COVID-19 is believed to have been started in a wet food market in China. Believed to have started off in bats. The virus moved from the bat into a pangolin, this is the current hypothesis and then from the pangolin it managed to get into mankind.”
Bragg says the current coronavirus pandemic might look small compared to oncoming viruses which he called “the real big pandemic”.
Listen to the interview with Professor Robert Bragg
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