Habitat Destruction, Deforestation, Pandemics: CNBC

Deforestation, climate change and other habitat destruction reduce biodiversity, bringing wild animals and humans closer along with infectious diseases. “The total number of disease outbreaks has more than tripled each decade since the 1980s,” reports Emma Newburger for CNBC. “More than two thirds of the diseases originated in animals and most of those were directly transmitted from wildlife to people.” Insects and viruses search for new homes and hosts. Researchers theorize that the current Covid-19 pandemic may have originated in a horseshoe bat before transmission to other animals and humans. Roger Frutos, infectious diseases researcher at the University of Montpellier in France, points to a higher density of bat-borne viruses and pathogens near humans; other researchers estimate that as many as 3,000 strains of coronavirus may already exit in bats. Only about 15 percent world’s forests are intact, reports the World Resources Institute, and millions of species face extinction. Some researchers suggest deforestation of the Amazon rainforest could exacerbate Covid-19 in that region. – YaleGlobal