Climate change can make most human diseases worse

Polio is back, monkeypox isn’t slowing down, COVID-19 is still around — and now there’s more not-so-good news on the infection front: over 200 human diseases could get worse because of climate change, according to a new study.

Researchers have known for a long time that the changing climate affects disease. Warmer temperatures can make regions newly hospitable to disease-carrying mosquitoes, while floods from more frequent storms can carry bacteria in their surges of water.

Most research, though, only focused on a handful of threats or one disease at a time. The new study, published in Nature Climate Change, built a comprehensive map of all of the ways various climate hazards could interact with 375 documented human infectious...

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