Scientists are urgently seeking information to resolve one critically essential aspect of the coronavirus outbreak that has killed more than 50 people and infected at least 1,000, since the disease emerged in Wuhan, China.
Researchers say they desperately want to find out whether most cases have been caused by the repeated spillover of the virus from animals to people, or whether most instances were caused by human-to-human transmission.
Trevor Bedford, an evolutionary geneticist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, told the journal Nature, the situation is a big epidemiological goal for everyone at the moment.
There's a prospect that the new epidemic could peter out fairly quickly if most instances detected so far were as a result of direct infections from animals. However, the chances that a first worldwide epidemic is now underway that dramatically if new instances currently transmit through human-to-human transmission. Chinese president Xi Jinping has already warned that the spread of the lethal new virus is "accelerating."
Coronaviruses are a big family of viruses, several of which cause respiratory illnesses - including the common cold. Others have advanced into more severe illnesses, which include severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and the Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers-CoV).
Analyses by using scientists along with Bedford have to find out the genetic sequences of the numerous strains of 2019-nCoV - the previously unknown coronavirus that is inflicting the current outbreak - which isolated the patients and suspected cases.
The lack of genetic diversity of this new virus suggests the common ancestor of these one-of-a-kind strain only emerged recently in late 2019. However, studies do not yet say whether or not the recent rapid growth of the virus came about in humans or in an animal reservoir.
Prof. Jonathan Ball, of Nottingham University, said the scientists need to gain a higher understanding of what is taking place in China. The specialists mainly want to know how the virus unfolds, whether or not people with slight or no signs can transmit the virus, and where the virus originated.
Professor Chris Whitty, England's chief scientific officer, warned that there had been a "fair chance" circumstances that would emerge in Britain as the overall number of cases around the world climbed to almost 1,400.
Researchers revealed info of analyses of the first 41 patients admitted to hospitals with confirmed cases of the virus in a research published in the Lancet.
Two-thirds had been in no small seafood market in Wuhan that also offered wild animals for meat and is thought to be the place the virus started from an animal source to humans.
Most cases - with 49 as the median age - had pneumonia. Some had flu, cough, and fatigue. Few of them had headaches and diarrhea. The examined patients were healthy until they incurred the virus.
Scientists, in another Lancet paper, reported the results of a study of five patients in a family cluster who had currently traveled to Wuhan and had shriveled the virus.
Alarmingly, one baby with the virus did not have any symptoms. Until then, the health government had said that humans with the virus all showed signs and symptoms of fevers and coughs.
An asymptomatic infection, however, changes that picture dramatically. Research leader Dr. Kwok-Yung Yuen of Hong Kong-Shenzhen Hospital explained that controlling the epidemic will additionally rely on isolating patients, tracing and quarantining contacts as early as possible, educating the public on both food and personal hygiene, and ensuring healthcare people comply with contamination control because asymptomatic contamination of the virus seems possible.