‘Zombie’ Virus Frozen for 48,500 Years in Arctic Could Spark Deadly Pandemic, Warns Scientists

Researchers have raised concerns about the potential danger posed by viruses long buried beneath Arctic permafrost and other frozen regions. According to a report in The Guardian, scientists warn that melting Arctic permafrost, accelerated by global warming, could unleash ‘zombie viruses’, posing serious global health risks.

This heightened concern about these ancient viruses comes in the wake of rising global temperatures, leading to the thawing of previously frozen ice. Last year, scientists retrieved samples from the Siberian permafrost to better understand the risks these millennia-old viruses pose.

Jean-Michel Claverie, a geneticist from Aix-Marseille University, shared with The Guardian that pandemic threat analyses typically focus on diseases originating in warmer regions and spreading northward. However, he believes there’s been insufficient attention to the possibility of an outbreak starting in the far north and moving southward. According to Claverie, the Arctic may harbor viruses capable of infecting humans and sparking new disease outbreaks.

Marion Koopmans, a scientist from the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, echoed these concerns, acknowledging the real risk of a virus from the permafrost triggering a disease outbreak, possibly an ancient form of a known virus like polio. Koopmans emphasized the need to consider such a scenario.

In 2014, a team led by Claverie in Siberia discovered that, despite being buried in permafrost for thousands of years, some viruses remain viable and can infect single-celled organisms. They even isolated one virus sample dating back 48,500 years.

Claverie noted that while the viruses they isolated could only infect amoebae and were not harmful to humans, this doesn’t rule out the possibility of other permafrost viruses being harmful. The team has identified genomic traces of poxviruses and herpesviruses, which are known human pathogens, in their research.