Track 2: Emerging Infectious Diseases
Emerging infectious illnesses are those that have recently entered a population, whose incidence or geographic range is rapidly expanding, or which threatens to do so shortly. The World Health Organization warned that infectious diseases are emerging at an unprecedented rate in a report published in 2007. Since the 1970s, over 40 infectious diseases have been discovered, including COVID-19, which is brought on by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, SARS, MERS, Ebola, chikungunya, swine flu, and Zika. Living in more densely populated areas, traveling over distances that are much greater than in the past, and coming into closer contact with wild animals raise severe concerns about the potential for new infectious diseases to spread swiftly and start global epidemics like influenza and many others. Such illnesses pay little attention to international boundaries. The small number of organisms that are capable of effective human-to-human transmission might generate significant national and international concern as potential epidemics or pandemic triggers. They may have a range of therapeutic, societal, and economic repercussions.