Arya News - RNA virus catalog ranks 239 pathogens by pandemic potential, helping scientists prioritize vaccine development before the next outbreak forces the issue.
Every year, scientists identify two to three viruses never previously seen in humans. Most disappear into obscurity. But researchers at the University of Edinburgh , led by Mark Woolhouse , decided to stop waiting for the unlucky one and built something closer to a threat map — a systematic catalog of all 239 RNA virus species known to infect humans, ranked by how they spread, what they cause, and whether they could trigger the next pandemic.
The top tier is where things get genuinely dangerous: human-adapted viruses with an R-number above one , meaning each infected person spreads it to more than one other. Think measles, SARS-CoV-2, seasonal coronaviruses. Woolhouse’s analysis found that highly transmissible viruses cluster phylogenetically near other human-adapted strains — SARS-CoV-2’s kinship with SARS-CoV-1 confirmed a pattern his team had identified before COVID arrived. According to his work , a novel measles-related virus would carry a far more worrying pandemic profile than Andes or Bundibugyo, which kill efficiently in limited settings but lack the machinery for rapid global spread.
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