MOSCOW, January 26. /TASS/. Recent claims about the beginning pandemic due to the release of viruses from Siberia's permafrost are speculative. A new pandemic's risks are much higher from viruses circulating among animals, Deputy Director of the Pasteur St. Petersburg Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology Vladimir Dedkov told TASS.

Earlier, The Guardian, referring to European scientists, wrote the Arctic ice shrinking would favor shipping traffic and forecasted the beginning of industrial development in Siberia's permafrost zone. Large-scale mining operations, the article said, would cause huge emissions of pathogenic microorganisms.

"The claims a new pandemic may occur due to viruses in Siberia's permafrost zone are speculation. Permafrost exists not only in Russia - it exists, for example, in Denmark on the Island of Greenland, or in the USA on the Alaska Peninsula, but those scientists are talking exclusively about Siberia and its development. From a political point of view, we are currently fighting for the Arctic shelf and the Northern Sea Route. Therefore, as part of this struggle, they come up with all sorts of stories to take control of something or to limit someone. Here I can see just an attempt to interfere with this country's internal affairs," he said, adding "it is quite like a situation where people may as well encounter unknown viruses or microbes when cutting down forests in Amazon, where it has never been done, or in any other places where not a single human has set foot."

From the scientific point of view, he continued, much more threatening are viruses circulating in modern animals. "For example, some viruses of bats living in the Amazon forests, and of which we know nothing. When developing such territories, humans many contact animals or their waste products, which carry risks of infections," he added, stressing such a probability is tenfold higher than a contamination with viruses from the permafrost zone. "This, in fact, is what we could observe on the example of the COVID-19 epidemic, Ebola, Marburg and so forth," the expert said.

As for the permafrost, over there contacts are more probable with dangerous bacteria, like, for example, with the causative agent of anthrax, rather than with viruses. "Viruses have developed after multicellular organisms and they are unable to exist by themselves, as they need an organism in which they will reproduce," the scientist said. Additionally, distant ancestors of humans most likely have already encountered viruses that are in the permafrost, and "have been selected for survival amid those viruses. Therefore, <...> our immune system is [most likely] ready for this," he added.

Arctic studies and control

Russia has programs to study the Arctic region, the expert told TASS. For example, the Arctic Forum that has been held in St. Petersburg annually for many years discusses biosafety in that region. "Scientists have been monitoring the ice melting, they study the composition of chemicals polluting the Arctic zone, as well as whatever biological objects found there - bacteria, viruses, and so on," he said, stressing the ongoing work in the Arctic features various ministries and agencies.

"Rospotrebnadzor (Russian consumer safety watchdog) also has been working on biosafety in the Arctic zone. Monitoring there continues permanently. There is no real threat to the Russian population, everything has been fully controlled and monitored," he said. Russia has sufficient knowledge, skills and technologies to ensure the country's biological safety and to protect the population from pathogens that potentially may be detected in the Arctic zone as well as beyond it.