Scientists have warned that the discovery of a new 'zombie' virus found frozen in time could spark a terrifying new pandemic around the world.
The Arctic zombie virus was found in Siberia and has been trapped in permafrost for millennia.
Experts have since warned that the ancient viruses frozen could one day be released unwittingly by the Earth’s rising temperatures and gradually warming climate to unleash a major disease outbreak around the globe.
The findings - named Methuselah microbes – have already been isolated by researchers who have raised fears that a new global medical emergency could be triggered – not by an illness new to science but by a disease from the distant past.
Scientist Jean-Michel Claverie told The Guardian: "At the moment, analyses of pandemic threats focus on diseases that might emerge in southern regions and then spread north.
"By contrast, little attention has been given to an outbreak that might emerge in the far north and then travel south – and that is an oversight, I believe. There are viruses up there that have the potential to infect humans and start a new disease outbreak.”
Virologist Marion Koopmans of the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam added: “We don’t know what viruses are lying out there in the permafrost but I think there is a real risk that there might be one capable of triggering a disease outbreak – say of an ancient form of polio. We have to assume that something like this could happen.”
Scientists in France previously stumbled across 30,000-year-old microbes from 100 feet deep in the snow and say the zombie virus they found became infectious again after it had thawed when tested. While it posed no threat to humans or animals, they warned that other viruses hidden deep in the frost could do.
Experts have since begun planning an Arctic monitoring network.
This will pinpoint early cases, spread the word to other researchers and allow health experts to set up early quarantines and expert medical treatment should a human ever become infected.
