Trend Rising zoonotic spillover and viral zoonoses

Summary

The report finds that, even leaving the covid pandemic aside, spillover events in which animal diseases jump to humans, and the deaths reported from them, have increased over recent decades. A large share of new or re-emerging infectious diseases are zoonoses of animal origin. Human activities such as urbanisation, deforestation, biodiversity loss, intensive livestock farming, trade and transport networks and habitat destruction are the main drivers because they intensify contact between people and animals, and climate change adds to the risk. More and more inhabited areas now lie in zones at high risk of outbreaks, and the report counts viral zoonoses among the fastest-growing threats to global health, expecting epidemics to occur more regularly than before. In the Netherlands too, the presence of ticks and the burden of tick-borne Lyme disease have clearly risen over a long period.