Conveners
Zoonoses & Emerging Infections
- Jonathan Pekar (University of Edinburgh)
- Verity Hill (KU Leuven)
Flavivirus infection causes >100,000 annual cases of encephalitis and meningitis worldwide, with case fatality rates of 20-50%. Encephalitic flaviviruses include West Nile virus, which caused widespread outbreaks in Europe and the US in 2025, and Japanese Encephalitis virus, which entered temperate Australia in 2022 and became endemic within a single season. These highly pathogenic...
Spillover of emerging pathogens increasingly challenges human health and societal stability. One of the deadliest endemic diseases in West Africa, Lassa mammarenavirus (LASV), shows increasing potential for international outbreaks. Despite this, LASV remains undersampled and lacks a standardized approach to classifying the current sampled diversity. To address this gap, we assembled and...
Dengue disease is caused by four types of dengue virus, infecting an estimated 390 million people annually in endemic in tropical areas of the planet where the competent mosquito vector is available. Dengue viruses are thought to have emerged as a spillover from the sylvatic cycle, where the virus is transmitted among non-human primates in Southeast Asia and West and Central Africa. Based on...
