The Science of Infectious Diseases

WHO reports that infectious diseases typically kill more than 17 million people a year around the globe. That number recently increased with the emergence of the first global pandemic in more than a century, the COVID-19 outbreak, which had killed more than 2.8 million people by April 2021. The number of infectious diseases is on the rise. Thirty new diseases have emerged in the last twenty years, including SARS and MERS. For many of these new diseases, there is no treatment, cure, or vaccine. As a result, the diseases are able to spread widely. In addition, modern transportation, especially air travel, has made it nearly impossible to contain a fast-spreading disease to one country or area. Scientists predict that by 2050, infectious diseases will be the number one killer in the world, surpassing heart disease--