What’s Contributing to the Emergence of New Infectious Diseases?
More Programs and Publications Featuring Dr. Rodney Rohde
In this program:
What factors are impacting the emergence of new infectious diseases? Medical laboratory scientist Dr. Rodney Rohde discusses factors that have contributed to infectious diseases like SARS-CoV-2, SARS, COVID-19, and MERS.
Transcript
Interviewer:
What are the primary factors contributing to the emergence of new infectious diseases, and are we out of the woods?
Dr. Rodney Rohde:
Yeah, so it's a great question. There are many, many factors that can precipitate the occurrence and transmission of what typically we refer to as emerging infectious diseases, as well as reemerging infectious diseases. And some of those types of factors include our expanding human population. For example, we're living longer, we're moving into different geographic spaces. We're an aging population, so many of us are more immunocompromised than ever before. The urbanization of the population as well as globalization. And then, of course, things like climate change and industrial livestock production and overpopulation and conflicts, even when you think about what's going on around the world with respect to conflicts and the migration of people across borders, so on and on. And then when you tie it into some of the things we've been dealing with in the last few years, you can even think about the interaction or the integration of how people interact with wildlife perhaps or the foods they eat or the water they drink.
All of those can be really contributing factors to how new infectious diseases suddenly pop up. I always kind of joke with people that even COVID, for example, COVID-19, which is caused by SARS-CoV-2, some of those viruses were probably here. They were probably out there in the wildlife population, whether it was in bats or other types of rodents. And once a human being comes into contact and that virus makes a jump, then we think, oh my goodness, where did this come from? But in many instances, it's probably been around, we just haven't had that interaction or that jump yet.
Interviewer:
Yes, I think the first time I heard of COVID, and they called it SARS, I thought about SARS that started in China. So I thought there was possibly some kind of connection there.
Dr. Rodney Rohde:
Yeah, right. I mean, we've had really three different versions of SARS. We had the first SARS back in 2000, early 2000s, and we had MERS, you might remember, which was Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome, which kind of came out of camels. Camel interaction with humans. And then, of course, in 2019, the explosion, once we found out about SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19. So all of those we have dealt with and we're still dealing with, right? So we're not completely out of the woods when you talk about COVID. And even though we are in a time of lower prevalence and lower death rates and things like that, it is still killing people and it is still causing hospitalizations, and we're still learning. There's so much to learn about long COVID and so many other things that are happening that will unfold as the years go forward, I'm sure.
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