After the COVID-19 pandemic wreak havoc, killing millions of people worldwide, scientists from the UK have built a super-laboratory that aims to stop the next big pandemic, "Disease X", from crippling the UK.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has recently identified a mysterious and potentially catastrophic "Disease X" that is believed to stem from animal viruses and is capable of infecting humans and spreading globally, putting the entire world at risk.
The scientists at the 7,000-acre super-laboratory have been rapidly testing existing vaccines on new variants of the virus. They are also preparing prototypes that can be adapted for the next “Disease X” within 100 days of it being detected.
Social media is flooded with videos and photos of a sneak peek into the world’s oldest chemical warfare research facility at the defence base near Salisbury, Wiltshire.
Dame Jenny Harries, Head of the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), revealed the laboratory and emphasized that climate change and the growing world population have increased the likelihood of pandemics such as Covid-19.
However, Harries added that monitoring the population and rapidly producing vaccines could stop a future outbreak of the deadly virus.
The UKHSA has established the lab as its new £405 million Vaccine Development and Evaluation Centre (VDEC).
The state-of-the-art VDEC has enabled a 30-fold increase in high containment capacity to test live viruses – something many countries do not have.
It can now test 3,000 emerging viruses and new variants a week, a massive increase from just 100 weekly before Covid.
Apart from the new COVID variant, scientists have been reportedly working on vaccines and cures for bird flu, monkeypox, tuberculosis (TB) and hantavirus (a severe infection that can pass from rodents to humans).
They are also working on a vaccine for the feared Crimean Congo haemorrhagic fever which has a 30% fatality rate.