HK top microbiologist suggests universal antiviral drugs to prevent future pandemic
Hong Kong microbiologist Kwok-yung Yuen recommends universal antiviral medications as key to preventing future viral outbreaks.
His comment was made at a public lecture hosted by the Macau University of Science and Technology (MUST). The lecture was part of a medical summit organized for the university’s 23rd anniversary.
Existing antiviral medicine, Yuen said, is difficult to use as a measure to cope with outbreaks because it usually only combats a single virus. When a new virus emerges, “it takes another several years to invent new ones,” he said.
In addition, antivirus medicines do not kill viruses but merely obstruct the virus in cleaving segments of a protein to invade and replicate within the nucleus of human cells.
In response to a question from the audience on whether he considered a cocktail of medication to be a feasible approach against viral infections, he emphasized that currently, viruses can only be neutralized in the process of easing an infection.
When asked to estimate when the next pandemic or outbreak might occur, Yuen emphasized that medical speculations are most of the time incorrect. Adding to this, Yuen noted that outbreaks have recently occurred closer in time to one another.
“SARS-CoV-3 isn’t unimaginable,” he warned, and pointed out that infections spread by mosquitoes will become more common due to global warming attracting the insect to higher latitude locations.
He recalled that in 1997 and 2003, outbreaks caused by H5N1 flu and SARS-CoV-1 were detected within the Pearl River Delta Region. In 2013, the H7N9 flu outbreak was recorded in the Yangtze River Delta Region.
Both are coastal regions of China.
Therefore, Yuen and his team had predicted that the next viral outbreak would happen in the Bohai Bay Region near the country’s capital. However, contrary to their expectations, China’s first outbreak of Covid-19 was recorded in Wuhan, an inland city.
Yuen considered Wuhan’s position as a transport hub to be one of the main reasons behind the rapid spread of infection.
The scholar pointed out that since 2003, over 60 new viruses had been discovered, of which over 30 were novel coronaviruses. His research team at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) conducted surveillance on animals and discovered that among the 60 new viruses, two were human viruses, 25 affected bats and 27 affected birds.
His aspiration is to develop a method of detecting over 30 known human-infecting viruses within an hour, in the race against the spread of viruses and to cure as many patients as possible. AL
