The UK has been hit by a string of viral threats in recent years - but the worse could still be to come in the form of 'Disease X'.
While Britain's health service has been stretched by the outbreak of Covid, as well as recent cases of monkeypox, polio, and hepatitis, experts warn that the world is now at the start of a pandemic era in which epidemics will be more common.
Disease X is not an actual threat facing either the UK or the world but a term used by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to describe a disease with the potential to cause an epidemic. One sign of the pandemic era is the number of diseases detected in the UK this year, which also include bird flu, Lassa fever and Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever.
