Will Arctic Zombie viruses spark another pandemic?

In 2014, scientists showed that live viruses in Siberia buried in permafrost for thousands of years could still  infect single-cell organisms today. Beneath the permafrost were also traces of poxviruses and herpesviruses. As global warming continues, meteorologists are warning that the Arctic’s permafrost is heating up much more rapidly than other global regions.

Geneticist Jean-Michel Claverie of Aix-Marseille University is concerned that long-buried viruses in the region may infect humans as the ice melts and the viruses emerge. “Huge mining operations are being planned, and are going to drive vast holes into the deep permafrost to extract oil and ores.Those operations will release vast amounts of pathogens that still thrive there. Miners will walk in and breath the viruses. The effects could be calamitous.”

This point was backed by virologist Marion Koopmans of the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam. “We don’t know what viruses are lying out there in the permafrost but I think there is a real risk that there might be one capable of triggering a disease outbreak – say of an ancient form of polio. We have to assume that something like this could happen.”

Is the human immune system ready for an ancient virus that may be more than a million years old? If not, what is being done to prepare for such an outbreak? Read more in The Guardian.