How climate change could bring back long-dormant viruses

PARIS - Long-dormant viruses brought back to life; the resurgence of deadly and disfiguring smallpox; a dengue or zika"season" in Europe.

Even if humanity manages to cap global warming at under 2 deg C, the cornerstone goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement, the permafrost area will decrease by a quarter by 2100, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change , the United Nations' climate science panel."Micro-organisms can survive in frozen space for a long, long time," said Dr Vladimir Romanovsky, a professor of geophysics at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks.

"Neanderthals, mammoths, woolly rhinos all got sick, and many died," said Dr Claverie."Some of the viruses that caused their sicknesses are probably still in the soil." Other pathogens - such as smallpox or the influenza strain that killed tens of millions in 1917 and 1918 - may also be present in the sub-Arctic region.

"With the industrial exploitation of the Arctic, all the risk factors are there - pathogens and the people to carry them," Dr Claverie said. Meanwhile, another dengue-bearing mosquito, Aedes aegypti, has also appeared in Europe. Whichever species may be the culprit, the Europe Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has registered 40 cases of local transmission of dengue between 2010 and 2019.

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