Climate change ‘already’ raising risk of virus spread between mammals

 Mammals forced to move to cooler climes amid global warming are
“already” spreading their viruses further – with “undoubtable”
impacts for human health, a new study says. The research, published in
Nature, uses modelling to map how climate change could shift the geographic
ranges of 3,100 mammals species and the viruses they carry by 2070.

It finds that climate change is increasingly driving new encounters between
mammal species, raising the risk of novel disease spread. The world’s
“biodiversity hotspots” and densely populated parts of Asia and Africa
are most likely to be affected. The findings suggest that climate change
could “easily become the dominant [human] driver” of cross-species
virus transmission by 2070, the authors say.

 Carbon Brief 28th April 2022

April 30, 2022 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, climate change, health