A brand-new animal virus with human infection potential has been discovered in eastern China.
However, because the virus does not appear to be particularly contagious and does not appear to be lethal, scientists claimed they are not concerned.
China's New Identified Virus
FRANK RUMPENHORST/DPA/AFP via Getty Images
The virus, known as Langya henipavirus (LayV), is closely related to two other henipaviruses known to infect people, the Hendra virus and Nipah virus, as per Nature.
It can produce respiratory symptoms like fever, coughing, and exhaustion. These can be lethal and cause respiratory infections as well.
Researchers believe that shrews, which may have infected humans or indirectly through another animal, are carriers of the LayV virus.
On August 4, the New England Journal of Medicine1 described the virus.
Only 35 people have been infected with LayV, according to researchers, and none of the cases appear to be connected.
Edward Holmes, an evolutionary virologist at the University of Sydney in Australia, said there is no particular reason to be concerned about the new discovery, but continuous surveillance is vital.
To comprehend the risk of zoonotic illnesses, or those that can be transmitted from other animals to humans, he argued, both people and animals should be routinely tested for new viruses.
According to Emily Gurley, an infectious-diseases epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, significant epidemics of infectious diseases often begins after numerous false starts.
People are in a much better position to halt or identify anything early if they are actively looking for those sparks, the researcher said.
Between April 2018 and August 2021, the research team that discovered LayV monitored patients at three hospitals in the eastern Chinese provinces of Shandong and Henan.
If a participant had a fever, they were invited to participate in the study.
The researchers discovered 35 LayV-infected individuals, predominantly farmers, throughout the investigation, with symptoms ranging from severe pneumonia to a cough.
In a questionnaire, the majority of patients acknowledged having come into contact with an animal within a month of their symptoms developing.
The researchers looked for LayV antibodies in goats, dogs, pigs, and cattle living in the villages of infected patients, and they collected tissue and urine samples from 25 species of wild small animals to look for LayV RNA.
They found LayV antibodies in a few goats and dogs, and they found LayV viral RNA in 27% of the 262 sampled shrews.
According to Gurley, this demonstrated that shrews are a virus reservoir, spreading LayV among themselves and accidentally infecting people occasionally.
Furthermore, according to Gurley, it is unclear whether people contracted the disease directly from shrews or through an intermediary species.
She thinks a lot of research is still needed to determine how the virus spreads in shrews and how humans become affected.
To prevent any pandemics like the one brought on by COVID-19, Holmes says there is an urgent need for a global surveillance system to detect virus spillovers and quickly disseminate those results.
These zoonotic spillover occurrences occur frequently, he claimed.
How Is The Langya Virus Spread and How To Treat It?
Since the Langya virus is a zoonotic infection, it spreads from animals to people.
However, since none of the cases in China were close to one another, medical professionals think that human-to-animal virus transmission is still infrequent, as per Euronews.next.
The virus was undoubtedly transferred from an animal to a human, but it is still unknown whether human-to-human transmission is even conceivable.
The contact tracking of 9 patients with 15 close family members showed no virus spread, according to the Chinese researchers.
The same researchers, however, contend that the sample examined is insufficient to conclude whether human-to-human transmission is likely to occur.
Henipavirus vaccines are not yet available for humans, however, there is a horse vaccination against the Hendra virus.
