While the seemingly interminable COVID-19 global pandemic is believed to have started with an endemic disease in bats that was transmitted to humans via a third species of animal, other cases of such zoonotic diseases have become (and are becoming) harder to treat because of mutations within the nuclear structure of the pathogens, according to the chief of the country’s new wildlife diseases control agency.
In the past, viral transmission appeared to be restricted to within species boundaries ― humans or animals. But certain novel viruses have been discovered that can be transmitted across these boundaries infecting both humans and animals, and at a certain point, some began to mutate and become deadly in certain species.
“Take coronavirus, for example,” Noh Hee-kyong, head of the National Institute of Wildlife Disease Control and Prevention (NIWDC), told The Korea Times. “While it doesn’t affect bats, it has proven capable of wreaking havoc on humans. Recently in Denmark, another virus that was transmitted to farmed minks went through a mutation, became a new virus and infected humans. Avian influenza, while it has only mild symptoms in ducks no greater than a cold, is lethal to large-size birds such as tundra swans or farmed chickens.”
For most zoonotic diseases, people are able to avoid infection thanks to the development of vaccines for conditions such as typhoid, cholera, tetanus, rabies, foot-and-mouth disease, dengue fever and measles. But this is not the case with influenza viruses, coronavirus and their variations, which can mutate as they are transmitted back and forth between humans and animals.
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| Fire consumes land recently deforested by cattle ranchers near Novo Progresso, Para state, Brazil, Aug. 23, 2020. Environmentalists say that the Amazon has lost about 17 percent of its original area. AP |
One of the worst influences to date was the so-called “Spanish flu,” according to Noh. From 1914, it killed three percent ― 50 million ― of the entire global population, and in 1918 infected around 50 percent of Koreans, 140,000 of whom died. Swine flu, which the World Health Organization declared a pandemic in 2009, was a new strain of influenza known as the H1N1 virus. COVID-19, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) are variations of a coronavirus that have also cost many lives in South Korea. Patients presenting with severe fevers and thrombocytopenia syndrome, delivered through a bite from an outdoor tick, have recently increased each year.
“Even-toed ungulates in the wild can be a medium for foot-and-mouth disease, and geese and ducks for avian influenza, but now there is a higher risk that they can be spread even by humans or objects with traces from virus-infected imported meats,” Noh said. “Seventy-five percent of the currently known zoonotic diseases are transmissible between humans and animals, 11 of which South Korea’s disease control and prevention agency (KDCA) is designated to manage.”
While the newer zoonotic diseases could be harder to deal with because of pathogenic mutations, what is actually suspected of having caused the initial spread of these diseases is not superficial but far more deeply rooted ― the increasingly excessive anthropogenic activities that breach natural biospheres and thus narrow the buffer zones between humans and wildlife. Land development and urbanization have reduced wildlife habitats, while more and more international trade has increased the chances of contact between humans and wildlife species. Just as curious kids keep finding more beehives to poke and stir.
“Just as we need social distancing while this COVID-19 pandemic persists, people and wild animals should keep a distance from each other,” Noh said.
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| In this photo from April 2020, people wearing protective suits are seen in front of a Peking duck and a butcher shop on a street market in Wuhan, Hubei Province, the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. Reuters |
According to a workshop report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) released Oct. 29, pandemics such as COVID-19 originate from wildlife, but their emergence is “entirely driven by human activities.”
The report said global environmental changes such as in land-use; agricultural expansion and intensification; and the trade and consumption of wild animals, bring wildlife, livestock and people into closer contact, allowing animal viruses to “spill over” that lead to infections in people, sometimes causing outbreaks, and more rarely “true pandemics” that spread through road networks, urban centers and global travel and trade routes.
“An estimated 1.7 million currently undiscovered viruses are thought to exist in mammal and avian hosts,” the report said. “Of these, 540,000-850,000 could have the ability to infect humans. Pathogens with pandemic potential are particularly present in bats, rodents, primates, water birds, and livestock such as pigs, camels and poultry.”
The report also mentions that climate change poses a substantial future pandemic risk by driving the movement of people and wildlife reservoirs and thus spreading their pathogens in ways that lead to increased contact among species ― like tick-borne encephalitis in Scandinavia. It said aggravated global warming across the globe will “disrupt natural host-pathogen dynamics.”
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| The National Institute of Wildlife Disease Control and Prevention’s headquarters in Gwangju. Courtesy of NIWDC |
Completing ‘One Health’
Without the NIWDC established in late October, South Korea’s monitoring of wild animals, especially ones illegally brought here from overseas, was largely neglected. The job was formerly shared by different ministries including the Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, but it always lacked the manpower to conduct due scrutiny.
“The number of wildlife species outnumbers by far the number of people and livestock, and yet, our pathological studies on wildlife are almost non-existent, as the state of a black-box,” Noh said.
The NIWDC completes South Korea’s “One Health” system ― a rising globally accepted approach that integrates human health, animal health and the environment. While the KDCA and Animal and Plant Quarantine Agency have been dedicated to monitoring human health and livestock respectively, disease control and prevention regarding wildlife species had been undermined until the launch of the NIWDC.
Based in Gwangju, the NIWDC has teams focused on disease monitoring, response and analysis, with 33 officials in total. They investigate, preemptively monitor and intervene in zoonotic diseases’ possible infection routes, and support vaccine development. Noh said the agency will “utilize statistics on disease outbreaks and pathogen databases to support diagnosing and preventing future wildlife-borne diseases.”
While monitoring wildlife species is key to controlling the diseases they carry, the required systems, infrastructure and legal foundations in South Korea are still in the beginning phases. Biodiversity Division official Seo Ji-won from the environment ministry’s Natural Environment Policy Office told The Korea Times the central government has begun designing a “comprehensive wildlife species monitoring system” scheduled for completion by the end of 2021 ― while the total number of non-indigenous animals brought into in South Korea from overseas amounted to over 530,000 as of 2018.
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| In this photo from November 2017, a visitor to a wildlife animal cafe in Seoul’s Mapo District feeds a coati that has a bandage over its injured tail. Courtesy of AWARE |
The central government’s monitoring and quarantine procedures for reptiles and amphibians from overseas are still waiting for legal revisions before they can be fully implemented, and the situation is the same regarding the designation of airports and ports as reserved entry points for wildlife species from overseas. Controlling public venues displaying or selling such species other than zoos ― such as wildlife animal cafes, of which there are 47 nationwide as of June 2020 ― also waits for revisions to the country’s laws on zoo/aquarium management and wildlife species preservation and management.
The government was also allowing the caging and farming of wild animals that were not under the country’s legal protection mandates. “We are planning to build a facility where we can round up Asiatic black bears that have been illegally farmed,” Seo said, referring to the species designated vulnerable by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
To reduce the risks of pandemics from zoonotic diseases, the IPBES report said wildlife trade and land-use change must be reduced and One Health surveillance must be increased across countries ― although such jobs are estimated to cost between $40 billion and $58 billion annually, they cost less than the financial damage pandemics produce.
“Many of these suggested solutions seem costly, difficult to execute and their impact uncertain,” the report said. “However, economic analysis suggests their costs will be trivial in comparison to the trillions of dollars of impact due to COVID-19, let alone the rising tide of future diseases.”
