World leaders are set to meet this week to talk out concerns about the potential for a future pandemic that could cause 20 times more fatalities than Covid.

A panel led by World Health Organization chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Gehreyesus will debate 'novel efforts needed to prepare healthcare systems for the multiple challenges ahead' at a session called 'Preparing for Disease X' at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland News Today.

Disease X represents a hypothetical, currently unknown pathogen. It was added to the WHO's list of nine priority diseases in 2018.




In 2018, the WHO identified nine priority diseases (listed) that pose the biggest risk to public health. They were deemed to be most risky due to a lack of treatments or their ability to cause a pandemic





Disease X represents a hypothetical, currently unknown pathogen. It was added to the WHO's list of nine priority diseases in 2018

Dr Gehreyesus will be joined on Wednesday by Michel Demaré, chair of the board of pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, Brazilian health minister Nisia Trindade Lima, Royal Philips CEO Roy Jakobs, Indian hospital chain Apollo's executive vice-chairperson Preetha Reddy and Shyam Bishen, head of the center for health and healthcare and member of the World Economic Forum's executive committee.

In its list of priority diseases, the WHO said: 'Disease X represents the knowledge that a serious international epidemic could be caused by a pathogen currently unknown to cause human disease.'

The UN agency ranks Disease X alongside Covid-19, Ebola, Zika virus, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (Mers-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars).

Experts do not yet know what type of virus will trigger the next pandemic, but scientists have warned for decades that bird flu is the most likely contender.

Researchers say this is because of the threat of recombination — with high levels of human flu raising the risk of a human becoming co-infected with avian flu as well.

Others have long speculated Disease X would more generally come from zoonotic transmission — an animal virus or bacteria that jumps to humans. 

Some have even warned Disease X could be sparked by a biological mutation, an accident or a terror attack that catches the world by surprise and spreads fast. 

DailyMail.com previously spoke to three virus experts who agreed a respiratory virus — spread via droplets from coughs and sneezes — was most likely to trigger the next fast-spreading disease that causes a global shutdown.




In a session called 'Preparing for Disease X' at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, a panel led by World Health Organization chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Gehreyesus (pictured right) will debate 'novel efforts needed to prepare healthcare systems for the multiple challenges ahead





DailyMail.com previously spoke to three virus experts who agreed a respiratory virus was most likely to trigger the next fast-spreading disease that causes a global shutdown

They said the infamous Disease X would most likely appear after a farm worker is infected with an animal-borne disease that mutates, but said they could not rule out the disaster would be sparked by a lab leak, a main theory as to the origin of the Covid pandemic.

It was also possible, they warned, for the outbreak to be even worse than the Covid pandemic, pointing to the 1918 influenza outbreak, which killed an estimated 50 million people globally, compared to the seven million deaths from Covid.

Top culprits for the next pandemic, the experts speculated, were another coronavirus and avian influenza — a virus that infects birds but could possibly jump to humans.