A pro-lockdown virologist has warned that Donald Trump will face a flood of infectious diseases when he takes office.
Dr. Peter Hotez’s comments come as Congo is put on “maximum alert” after a mysterious respiratory virus killed nearly 150 people, mostly teenagers.
Dr. Hotez, a leading proponent of lockdowns and mask mandates during the Covid pandemic, warned that there are currently at least nine infectious diseases spreading in the US that could cause another pandemic – in a plea to the Trump administration not to cut back on funding financing disease research.
In an interview with MSNBC NewsDr. Hotez said, “This is why we have to worry about things like this. There are some big things coming from the pipeline.
“All of that will come crashing down on the Trump administration on January 21st. We need a really good team to handle this.”
Scientists are currently warning of an increase in bird flu cases in animals that pass to humans, as well as a resurgence of measles and whooping cough due to declining vaccination rates.
Dr. Hortez’s comments came hours before the Congolese government’s health minister warned that the country was on “maximum alert” due to an outbreak of a disease “of yet unknown origin.”
At least 376 people are reportedly already infected with the disease that has struck Kwango province in the southwestern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Children between the ages of 16 and 19 are the worst affected, the BBC reports, with patients suffering from a flu-like illness with symptoms including fever, headache, coughing, breathing difficulties and anemia – or a lack of red blood cells.
Dr. Peter Hotez, pictured above, spoke on MSNBC and warned of the dangers associated with
A team from the World Health Organization has been sent to the area to test samples and determine the cause of the disease. They are expected to publish the results of the tests in the coming days.
The Congolese Minister of Health, Roger Kamba, warned in a press conference today: ‘We are on maximum alert. We consider this an epidemic that we must monitor as much as possible.
“We’re kind of claiming it’s respiratory problems,” he added, talking about how the disease may spread between people.
But added that this was still a ‘hypothesis’ and that the country was still waiting for the first results of the tests.
Officials initially suggested that 143 people had died from the mystery illness authorities appear to have reduced that number to 71 deaths.
This includes 27 people who died in hospital and 44 people who died in the community.
Of the people who died in hospital, 10 died due to a lack of blood transfusions and 17 due to respiratory problems – the Health Minister said.
Most cases involved children in their late teens, between the ages of 15 and 18, according to the BBC.
Dr. Annie Rimoin, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has worked in Congo since 2002, said NBC News that diagnosing the diseases can be complicated by underlying health problems in the local population, including malaria and malnutrition.
Above is a doctor speaking to a patient about the treatment of monkeypox in the South Kivu region in September this year
The above map shows the Democratic Republic of Congo and highlights the province of Kwango where the outbreak has been recorded
“I think it’s really important to be aware of what’s happening, and I think it’s also really important not to panic until we have more information,” she said.
“It could be anything,” she added. “It could be the flu, it could be Ebola, it could be measles. At the moment we don’t really know yet.’
Dr. Krutika Kuppalli, an infectious disease expert and associate professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, said it was difficult to say at this stage what caused the outbreak because only general symptoms had been reported.
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“We need more information,” she told DailyMail.com, “the information currently provided speaks of a number of diseases.”
When asked if it could be monkeypox or Ebola, she said: ‘In what they’re reporting, we haven’t seen any reports of rashes or skin abnormalities – which would be consistent with mpox.
‘Normally with viral haemorrhagic fever (such as Ebola) you hear reports of coughing or vomiting blood, and that has not been reported either.’
She added: ‘The reports are concerning, but we need more data and more information about the symptoms they are seeing on the ground.’
While warning yesterday of emerging infectious disease outbreaks, Dr. Hotez did not specifically address the situation in the DRC during his phone call with MSNBC.
The above image is a screenshot from today’s press conference in the DRC. It shows Roger Kamba, head of the country’s Ministry of Health
He said, “I’m really concerned about (H5N1), it’s going all over wild birds in the western part of the United States, and as we go north it’s going to get into the poultry.
‘We’re still seeing sporadic human cases, no human-to-human transmission yet, but that could happen. It’s in the cattle, it’s in the milk, and that’s just the beginning.”
He continued: ‘We probably have another major coronavirus in Asia, we’ve had SARS-2 in 2002, Covid-19 in 2019, and we know that these viruses jump from bats to humans thousands of times a year.
‘But there is more. We know we have a major problem with mosquito-borne viruses all along the Gulf Coast, where I am here in Texas. We expect the Dengue virus and possibly Zika virus to come back or the Oropuche virus, maybe even yellow fever.
“And then we have this sharp increase in the number of vaccine-preventable diseases, partly because of the anti-vaccination activism that is so prominent now.
“We’ve seen a fivefold increase in whooping cough or whooping cough cases in the last year, 15 outbreaks of measles this year, we have polio, which is in the sewage in New York State.”
He warned that all these threats would fall on the Trump administration when it takes office on January 21, after Inauguration Day.
Trump has appointed vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Junior to head the Department of Health and Human Services, who must still be confirmed by the Senate.
He has already pledged to cut research spending on infectious diseases, and instead reallocate resources to solving the country’s chronic disease epidemic – with rising cases of heart disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity.