New Type of Coronavirus Jumping from Dogs to Humans

 

One day after the post about deer getting COVID-19, there's more news of cross-species transmission for us to worry about. There is a new type of coronavirus infecting humans, and it seems to be coming from dogs.

It's a good story about medical detective work. Some health care workers in Haiti were not feeling well. Physicians thought they might have Zika virus, which circulates there. But tests turned up negative.

So researchers exposed samples from the workers to a monkey cell culture, hoping if a virus were present it would infect the cells. It did, and genetic analysis of the cells showed the presence of a new kind of coronavirus, the eighth type known to infect humans.

Turns out a nearly identical coronavirus was detected previously in Malaysia, where it had caused pneumonia in children. The fact that is popped up in both places so recently suggests it may have been circulating widely and scientists hadn't noticed it until now.

Unlike deer, dogs do not avoid close contact with humans, so this is a potentially worrisome development.  It is not known whether the virus can transmit from human-to-human, but there are no known cases of that.

The good news is that scientists have discovered it early. This means they can start developing tests and surveillance, which we'll need if it mutates into something nasty that can also spread from human to human.

Image by PicsbyFran from Pixabay modified by Corona-zona

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