Bat habitat’s destruction can cause virus spillover

On the face of it, the international news agency Reuters’ enterprising journalistic investigation corroborated by epidemiologists and researchers mapping the bat habitat, and the threat of deadly viruses spilling over and causing an epidemic like that of Ebola, Marburg, Nipah and Covid-19 which could cause huge destruction seems like scare scenario, a page out of apocalyptic science fiction. But to ignore the report as a mere curiosity may not be the wise thing to do after experiencing the global epidemic of Covid-19 which had killed, according to conservative estimates of the World Health Organisation (WHO), seven million people, and it is estimated that the actual death toll would be much higher.

So, how did Reuters’ reporters go about mapping and profiling the virus-carrying bats? The strategy was to look at areas where there has been a viral outbreak in this century. It was found that the virus spillover is happening in areas, whether in West Africa, in Brazil, in India or in Laos in south-east Asia, where bat habitats are being encroached upon through rapid deforestation, and using the cleared land for agriculture, for mining, for industries and the growth of thickly-populated urban habitat. The argument being made is that when forests are razed, the flora and fauna get destroyed, but in the case of bats they survive the destruction, and adapt themselves to be part of the human habitat. It is this dangerous proximity between bats and humans that increases the dangers of virus spillovers.

Bats, according to researchers, are reservoirs and incubators of thousands of viruses. Bats have the ability to contain the most fatal viruses in their own biological system without being affected by them. No bat dies of a virus as do other animals and human beings. That is the major difference between the bats and others. It is estimated that about 1.8 billion people are in the virus danger zones in China, in India, in West Africa and in the Amazon jungles of Brazil, and the largest number of people exposed to the danger of a virus spillover are 500 million people in India. The overall safety valve seems to be that bat-infested forested areas should not be disturbed, and that there is greater wisdom in leaving them alone.

The outbreak of Covid-19 in 2020-21 and its fatal impact on the health systems of modern societies everywhere and the great disruption it has caused in the global economy seems to be reason enough to look into the future and the possibility of outbreaks of global pandemics caused by viruses. It is the kind of an in-depth study that should have been carried by research institutes all over the world instead of a news agency whose business it is to report developments in scientific research but not undertake a study project of its own. But it would be wrong to quibble when the danger is of global proportion like the outbreak of a pandemic of the Covid-19 kind, and it is always useful for someone to do the initial mapping of the probable danger zones where virus spillovers could happen.

One of the few persons who seemed to anticipate a global medical crisis was Microsoft-founder Bill Gates. The other was a group of experts advising former US President George W Bush, and concrete procedures were planned to face an epidemic. While Gates seemed a philanthropist and dilettante, the Bush medical team’s plan remained a closely-guarded secret. The good that can come out of the Reuters’ study of the prospects of a viral spillover, and why and how of it, is that has been placed in public domain and it is for governments, scientists, voluntary organisations to discuss the merits and demerits of the case, and work out global strategies of preventing viral spillovers, or of containing it as effectively as it is possible once there is a virus outbreak in any part of the world.