As the world warms, ancient permafrost is melting, putting humans in danger of getting infected with new viruses that were dormant in ice caps.
Such two dozen ancient viruses have been awakened by researchers and termed “zombie viruses”, with one virus in particular being frozen under a lake for more than 48,500 years, The Economic Times reported on Tuesday.
These viruses were revived from permafrost in the Siberia region of Russia.
European researchers examined these ancient viruses and revived 13 new pathogens that are infectious even though they were trapped under ice for millennia.
Scientists have been warning people that melting permafrost due to climate change would free previously greenhouse gases like methane and new infectious diseases would erupt that had been dormant for aeons.
However, the researchers could not pinpoint the exact effect of methane gas on the dormant pathogens.
Although the researchers from Russia, Germany and France said the revival of these new pathogens has a very slim chance of infecting animals or humans, the danger is still real that humans might get infected with viruses that were latent in the ice and released into the air due to thawing.
In an article posted to the preprint repository bioRxiv, which has not been peer-reviewed yet, the researchers said it is highly likely that ancient permafrost will release unknown viruses capable of infecting humans and animals upon thawing.
“However, it is impossible to estimate how long these viruses could remain infectious once released into the atmosphere and how likely they can infect a host,” the researchers wrote.