57% of the surveyed scientists from a new international study believe that the influenza virus strain will cause the next global outbreak of a deadly infectious disease. A total of 187 specialists took part in it, and it will be presented at the congress of the European Society for Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID), which will be held in Barcelona next weekend.

According to John Salmanton-Garcia, a researcher at the University of Cologne, the fact that influenza poses the biggest pandemic threat in the world is based on long-term studies showing that it is constantly mutating.

"The flu appears every winter. These outbreaks can be called small pandemics. They are more or less controlled because the various strains that cause them are not virulent enough. But this will not necessarily always be the case," said Salmanton-Garcia.

According to 21% of the study participants, the other most likely (after the flu) cause of the pandemic will be "disease X". They believe that the next outbreak will be due to an unidentified microorganism that "appears out of nowhere", as in the case of the Sars-CoV-2 virus, which led to the COVID-19 pandemic. 15% of researchers believe that it is Sars-CoV-2 that will provoke a new epidemic.