Lessons from Covid-19 help deal with alien pathogens

Scientists think caution should be taken before bringing alien specimens to Earth because they may contain pathogens.

According to some scientists, lessons from dealing with Covid-19 and other diseases will help the world prepare for the same danger from aliens , Space reported on February 26. NASA is preparing for the mission to bring rock samples from Mars to Earth to look for signs of microorganisms. If these samples contain living organisms, they may also contain pathogens. Because of the unknown nature of these Martian pathogens , humans have no way of knowing how they will respond to the Earth's environment.

Humans need to prepare for situations where specimens taken from Mars carry new pathogens.(Photo: Daily Express).

In the worst case scenario, they can lead to an outbreak. This is why it is important to study the interaction of diseases with the environment, according to Catharine Conley, an expert who worked at NASA's Planetary Protection Agency.

"Like the plague in history, Covid-19 is another example of the importance of understanding the consequences of interacting with environments where people are less exposed, then spreading things that I was infected , " said Conley.

"With the mission of discovering Mars, it is possible that the Earth creatures brought by the spacecraft will cause problems for the inhabitants of this place in the future. If the creatures living on Mars exist and are brought to Earth," he said. Soil, it is likely that they will affect the environment, like the algae that warm the ice in Greenland, rather than becoming a dangerous pathogen affecting humans, " she added.

However, if the organisms on Mars were related to the creatures on Earth, it would be more difficult to distinguish them from diseases from the Earth, Conley said. Then, just like the way disease moved from one species to another, the Martian pathogen was also more likely to infect humans.

John Rummel, a scientist at the Institute for Extraterrestrial Search, thinks that the Earth should be well prepared before carrying out its mission to bring specimens back from Mars. This preparation should be based on lessons learned when handling Covid-19. For example, the tests to detect nCoV are currently absolutely inaccurate and the infected person can be incubated for more than a week before the onset of symptoms. Pathogens on Earth may be limited during the changing season, but this is unlikely to be true of alien pathogens.

Rummel said that if a living creature were found in the Mars specimen, experts should conduct research in the quarantine area, although building isolation facilities can be expensive. Such analytical facility needs to be built in advance. Otherwise, when a dangerous virus like nCoV appears, other isolation facilities may not be ready, or meet the hygienic standards needed to ensure that they are from Mars, not newly infected. in the Earth.