Amazon could easily be next source of coronavirus, scientist warns

The next pandemic could come from the Amazon rainforest, warns Brazilian environmentalist David Lapola, who claims that human invasion into animal habitats, likely responsible for the coronavirus epidemic, is skyrocketing because of rampant deforestation.

Researchers say urbanization of once wild areas contributes to the appearance of zoonotic diseases – those who go from animals to humans.

This includes the new coronavirus, which scientists say originated from bats before moving to humans in Hubei Province, which is rapidly urbanizing in China, possibly through a third species.

Lapola, who studies how human activity will reform future tropical forest ecosystems, says the same processes are at play in the Amazon.

"The Amazon is a great reservoir of viruses," he told AFP in an interview. "We better not try our luck."

The largest in the world the rainforest is disappearing at an alarming rate

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Last year, during the first year in office of far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has increased 85 percent, more than 10,000 square kilometers (3,900 square miles), an area almost the size of Lebanon.

The trend continues this year.. From January to April, 1,202 square kilometers were eliminated, setting a new record for the first four months of the year, according to data based on satellite images from the National Space Research Institute (INPE). Brazil.

This is bad news, not only for the planet but also for human health, said Lapola, who has a PhD in Earth System Modeling from the Max Planck Institute in Germany and works at the University of Campinas in Brazil.

"When you create an ecological imbalance … that's when a virus can jump" from animals to humans, he said.

HIV, Ebola, Dengue

Similar patterns can be observed with HIV, Ebola and dengue: "all the viruses that have appeared or spread on a large scale due to ecological imbalances," he said.

So far, most of these outbreaks have been concentrated in South Asia and Africa, often linked to certain species of bats.

But the immense biodiversity of the Amazon could make the region "the largest group of coronaviruses in the world," he said, referring to coronaviruses in general, not the one hiding. behind the current pandemic.

"This is all the more reason not to use Amazon in an irrational way, as we do now," he said.

And added that one more reason to be alarmed by the increase in deforestation by illegal farmers, miners and loggers.

Bolsonaro, a climate change skeptic who wants to open up protected indigenous lands for mining and agriculture, deployed the military to the Amazon this week to tackle deforestation, to a rare extent protection.

But Lapola said he would prefer the government to strengthen the current environmental agency IBAMA, which has faced budget and staff cuts under Bolsonaro.

"I hope that under the next administration we will pay more attention to the protection of what may be the greatest biological treasure on the planet," said Lapola.