Name: Will the next pandemic start in Brazil? | DW Documentary
Uploaded: 2021-10-27T05:49:13.000Z
Duration: 28 min 26 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Their aim is to prevent the next catastrophe.

Bats carry a lot of viruses that could trigger pandemics.

Pandemics, of which we humans are the cause.

Because of our destruction of the environment,

humans are moving ever closer to wild animals.

We can cut down half the rainforest and there'll still be enough left.

People who are campaigning to protect the rain forest ?

How can we humans destroy a living forest, hundreds of years old,

We are in the Brazilian Amazon region with a group of virus hunters.

They are tracking down invisible killer pathogens in the jungle.

Our first trip takes us deep into the hinterland of São Paulo state.

It's the region of sugar cane plantations.

Trucks pass us by, carrying the sweet harvest.

We are out with biologist Cristiano Carvalho and his team.

In the few remaining strips of the Atlantic rain forest,

he is looking for the hiding places of bats.

He thinks he has located some in these water pipes,

where he heard the sound of wings flapping inside.

Dozens of them are living here in the cracks and crevices of the pipes.

I'm specialised in seeking out bat hideaways in regions like this,

Mostly I find them in trees, or like here, in water pipes.

The bat expert's work begins shortly before dusk.

He spans a net over the entrance and the bat hunt is on.

to find out how far the various viruses have spread.

to find out which bats are carrying which viruses.

everyone needs to wear protective clothing

Chiroptera — the scientific name for bats —

have been Cristiano's passion for 26 years.

He wants to lure them from the back of the pipe into the net.

Cristiano has to painstakingly untangle the animal from the net.

For him, it's a routine procedure after his many bat hunts.

He hands over the bats he has caught to virologist Angelica Campos,

who neatly hangs them up in fabric sacks.

It's only since this year that people worldwide

have been noticing that bats carry numerous viruses

which can be transmitted to humans and trigger pandemics.

That's why researchers are now looking more closely and precisely

to find out which viruses are being carried in each individual animal.

They need thick gloves to do the job. The bats are not afraid to bite.

Angelica takes samples out of the throats

places where the coronavirus likes to settle.

We've been expecting a coronavirus pandemic for years,

They keep finding new previously unknown viruses

With our work we want to prevent another pandemic from breaking out.

We are hunting for new, dangerous types of virus

there are more than 300,000 unknown pathogens in the world's jungles —

mostly hidden in the bodies of mammals such as bats or rodents.

the viruses and bacteria pose no threat to humans.

When humans and their livestock get too close to wild animals,

the viruses can be transmitted to cattle, pigs, or humans,

The bat samples have to be kept frozen at -80°C

on their way to the laboratory to keep the virus code intact.

It's important to get as many samples from the bats as possible,

so we can identify the many types of virus circulating in the population.

Bats are more interesting for researchers than other mammals,

as they carry an unusually high number of viruses.

We can think of bats as a kind of virus storage.

The pathogens stay in their bodies, far away from us humans.

Pandemics arise when humans encroach on the natural territory of the bats

and upset the balance of nature where the viruses exist.

on the way to their São Paulo laboratory with their freezer box.

Due to the sugar cane monoculture here the hanta virus has spread rapidly.

The hanta virus is not dangerous for the rodents.

But for humans, every second case of infection leads to death.

According to researchers, the hanta virus started spreading rapidly

after the jungle was cleared for the monoculutre.

Brazil began building roads through the impenetrable Amazon rain forest.

the military dictatorship laid the foundation

for the massive deforestation we see today.

Agriculture has bestowed prosperity upon many regions,

More and more railway lines and highways cut through the Amazon.

Every year fires ravage more swathes of the rain forest.