By Fatima Khalil

Sunday, November 05, 2023 at 12:00 p.m

Scientists have warned of a deadly virus that exists and they said it could become the “next pandemic” after the coronavirus. Nipah virus It may be the most contagious and deadly disease known to mankind.

The scientists explained that the Nipah virus can infect cells that have receptors that regulate the entry or exit of cells that line the central nervous system and vital organs, and the death rate of this variant reaches 75% compared to the coronavirus, which has one death. A rate of less than 1%.

The Paramyxoviridae family includes more than 75 viruses, including Nipah virus, mumps, measles and respiratory infections, and was added to the US Allergy and Infectious Diseases List of Epidemics to Watch last October.

Unlike influenza and corona, paramyxoviruses “change rapidly” and do not appear to mutate during their transmission, but they are “extremely good at spreading between humans,” the scientists pointed out.

Benhur Lee, a virologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in the US, told the newspaper. Atlantic: “Fever is sorted to death.”

This is not the case for paramyxoviruses, Lee explained, because most people infected with one of the more than 75 viruses do not survive, making it nearly impossible to develop treatments and vaccines.

The first parasite in the paramyxovirus family, called rinderpest, was identified in 1902.

Although scientists have known about paramyxoviruses for more than a century, they still do not understand how viruses jump to new species and how mutations develop to infect humans.