New coronavirus species found making the jump to humans in Sarawak

 

Researchers have identified a new coronavirus from samples taken from patients hospitalised in Sarawak several years ago and believe it was then in the early stages of making the jump from animal hosts to humans.

However, there is still no proof whether this new virus can be passed from human to human or whether it is capable of causing human diseases. The researchers argue that more study is needed.

“If confirmed as a pathogen, it may represent the eighth unique coronavirus known to cause disease in humans.

The seven coronaviruses known to cause disease in humans are the four that cause the common cold and those that cause Sars and Mers plus the SARS-CoV-2 virus that resulted in the current Covid-19 pandemic.

“Our findings underscore the public health threat of animal coronaviruses and a need to conduct better surveillance of them,” the authors wrote in their paper published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases yesterday.

The study involved researchers from the Ohio State University, Duke University, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Sibu Hospital and Segi University.

It is built on the group’s earlier work to design a new test meant to detect all coronaviruses including those which have yet to be discovered.

The authors said when testing swab samples collected from 301 patients hospitalised for pneumonia at the Sibu Hospital from 2017 to 2018, eight came back positive for a canine coronavirus.

The eight are mostly children. Apart from a 37-year-old, their ages ranged from 5½ months to 4½ years. They resided in Sibu, Bintulu, Daro and Julau and generally recovered after six days of hospitalisation.

For the study, the group managed to grow one of the eight specimens in the laboratory and gather enough of the coronavirus to have it undergo genomic sequencing.

They found the new virus genome to be mostly a match for a coronavirus previously known to infect dogs but not humans. Certain parts appear to have undergone recombination with other coronaviruses – one that typically infects cats and another that typically infects pigs.

They have named the new coronavirus CCoV-HuPn-2018 (Canine Coronavirus-Human Pneumonia-2018).

Canine coronavirus

According to a report on the study by the US-based broadcaster NPR, this meant the virus probably infected cats and pigs at some point but then jumped directly from dogs to people.

One mutation in CCoV-HuPn-2018 is cause for concern because it is not found in dog coronaviruses but is present in those that infect humans.

“It's a mutation that's very similar to one previously found in the SARS coronavirus and in (versions of) SARS-CoV-2 ... (that appeared) very soon after its introduction into the human population,” the study’s lead author Anastasia Vlastova was quoted as saying by NPR.

The NPR report said she believes this helps the canine virus infect or persist in humans and this might be a key step required for the virus to jump to people.

The report said this suggests the study caught the virus early on its jump to people, while it was still trying to figure out how to infect people efficiently.

However, the research paper cautioned that they have yet to prove that the virus is capable of causing disease in humans even though it has been found in patients hospitalised with pneumonia.

They wrote that it is possible that the canine coronavirus is merely “carried” in the patient’s airways without causing disease.

Other viruses were also found in all but one of the eight samples that tested positive for the canine coronavirus. They included adenoviruses, influenza viruses and rhinovirus.

Origins

The transmission of disease from animals to humans is known as zoonoses and this could spark large outbreaks if the pathogen adapts itself to transmit between humans more efficiently.

Examples include Sars that is linked to civets, Mers that is linked to camels and certain strains of influenza that are linked to birds.

The origins of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 is still being debated but is generally believed to have originated from bats and likely passed through an as-yet-undetermined intermediate host before making the jump to humans.

Yesterday, the World Health Organization and several other international bodies formed the ‘One Health High-Level Expert Panel’ which will develop a global plan to prevent the spread of disease from animals to humans.

The panel will also consider potential transmission risks in food production and distribution, urbanisation, infrastructure construction, international travel and trade and activities that lead to biodiversity loss and climate change, according to a Reuters report.

The panel is expected to publish its first recommendations later this year. - Mkini

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