Yellow Fever Resurgence Could Make COVID Look ‘Pale’ by means of Comparison

Yellow fever is a perilous mosquito-borne virus that, for centuries, has led to sporadic, fatal outbreaks within the tropics of South America, Central America, and Africa.

According to a brand new viewpoint from infectious illness experts and the Yellow Fever Advisory Group, the probabilities of the virus going world have handiest higher with each and every passing decade.

A contemporary resurgence in yellow fever instances in Africa and the Americas has mavens critically anxious about long term unfold to the Asia Pacific area.

“The world is clearly at high risk for epidemic/pandemic yellow fever,” the global workforce concludes, led by means of infectious illness specialist Duane Gubler from the National University of Singapore.

“A yellow fever pandemic in today’s world would cause a devastating public health crisis that, because of the much higher lethality, would make the COVID-19 pandemic pale by comparison.”

Unfortunately, the yellow fever virus has an extended historical past of commute.

Prior to the 1600s, yellow fever and its mosquito carriers had been endemic to Africa. Later, they unfold to the Americas by means of the transatlantic slave industry, every now and then killing as much as 10 p.c of a few native populations within the New World.

When the virus started taking on Europe, more or less a century later, it changed into referred to as the “American plague”.

The construction of a extremely efficient yellow fever vaccine within the 1930s modified the whole lot. Yellow fever mosquitoes had been additionally virtually totally eliminated within the Western Hemisphere, and the 2 components stopped city unfold within the Americas.

In the a long time since, yellow fever mosquitoes have re-infested a lot of the neotropics, and whilst Africa continues to revel in intermittent epidemics in city facilities, the Americas had been freed from a yellow fever epidemic for 80-plus years, handiest experiencing small and rare outbreaks.

Scientists are involved that reprieve would possibly not closing for for much longer.

In contemporary years, there may be been a worrisome resurgence in yellow fever outbreaks in Africa and the Americas, most likely on account of deficient vaccine protection, growth of human populations, loss of commute restrictions, and/or loss of mosquito keep watch over.

According to Gubler and associates, tropical towns that experience now not traditionally skilled yellow fever now face “the greatest risk in over 70 years” of an epidemic.

“Of primary concern in this regard is the Asia-Pacific region,” the workforce provides, “where over two billion susceptible people live in areas infested by yellow fever mosquitoes.”

These mosquito populations are not wearing the yellow fever virus simply but, however they’re species which are able to doing so.

If a human traveller with yellow fever returns to the Asia-Pacific area after commute in Africa or South America, it’s conceivable that native mosquitoes chew them and contract the virus. This may just permit for unfold amongst new insect populations in new areas, threatening native people with a spillover match.

“Today’s megacities all have modern airports through which billions of people pass every year, many of them visiting remote locations and carrying exotic pathogens back to crowded tropical cities, where the probability of secondary transmission is increased,” warns the hot viewpoint.

“If the virus is introduced to a permissive nonendemic country, especially one located in Asia, the disease might be first misdiagnosed as dengue, likely resulting in spread before being recognized as the yellow fever virus.”

So what are we to do?

Researchers say that first, we wish to amplify the worldwide provide of yellow fever vaccines and toughen protection. Otherwise, outbreaks will proceed and we would possibly not be able if the virus spreads to new areas.

Gubler and associates additionally argue for higher surveillance of yellow fever instances in deficient nations the place the illness is endemic, and in non-endemic nations the place the virus might be able to unfold at some point.

“Immunization services, disease surveillance, and the outbreak response in nearly 50 countries are already being disrupted – with setbacks at a similar level to what we saw during COVID-19,” warned UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell in April 2025.

“We cannot afford to lose ground in the fight against preventable diseases.”

The viewpoint was once revealed in NPJ Viruses.