New SARS-like virus in China triggers alarm
Pneumonia outbreak in Wuhan appears to subside, but the virus could re-emerge.
On New Year's Day, Wuhan health authorities closed a live animal market linked to the mysterious outbreak.
PHOTO: NOEL CELIS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Had the nightmare returned? That's the question many were asking in the first 10 days of this year, after a new form of pneumonia emerged in Wuhan, a megacity in central China. The outbreak revived memories of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), the disease that emerged in China in 2002 and sickened 8098 people in 37 countries before it was quashed in the summer of 2003. Like SARS, the Wuhan pneumonia cases were linked to a market selling myriad species of live animals, and they appear to be caused by a new member of the coronavirus family closely related to the SARS virus. And once again, China appeared to be less than forthcoming with information.
Today, global health experts are breathing a little easier. As Science went to press, only one of 42 people known to be infected had died: a 61-year-old man already suffering from abdominal tumors and chronic liver disease. (SARS had a 9.6% mortality rate.) No evidence suggests the virus easily passes between humans, which can turn a local problem into a global crisis. And Chinese researchers have now shared the sequence of six genomes of the as-yet-unnamed virus with the world, which scientists elsewhere have used to quickly develop and publish a diagnostic test. Ralph Baric, a coronavirus researcher at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, is already trying to synthesize live virus from the data so that he can study it in animals.
Still, many questions remain. Researchers have not identified the animal species at the marketplace that harbored the virus. When it emerged and the true number of people infected remain a mystery. Meanwhile, a case in Thailand, reported on 13 January—in a tourist who flew from Wuhan to Bangkok—led World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to consult experts on outbreak responses. The patient had not visited the Wuhan market at the center of the outbreak but had been to other animal markets, suggesting the virus has spread within Wuhan, the South China Morning Post reported on 14 January.
The first known patient developed symptoms—which can include difficulty breathing and fever—on 8 December 2019. Officials closed the seafood market on New Year's Day, and no new patients have been identified in Wuhan since 3 January. The virus was not found in 763 close contacts of those infected, or in health care workers, who often fall ill during outbreaks of viruses that can transmit between humans. “It is a limited outbreak,” says Xu Jianguo, who runs an infectious disease laboratory at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and heads an evaluation committee that's advising the Chinese government. “If no new patients appear in the next week, it might be over.”
WHO said in a 12 January statement that it was “reassured of the quality of the ongoing investigations and the response measures implemented in Wuhan, and the commitment to share information regularly.”
But others criticized the way early information came out. News that researchers had discovered a novel coronavirus came in an 8 January story in The Wall Street Journal; Xu confirmed the finding on a state-run TV station several hours later. “It's not a good situation when The Wall Street Journal [reports] a SARS-like coronavirus before the Chinese government announces it,” Baric says. On 10 January, Jeremy Farrar, an infectious disease specialist who heads the London-based Wellcome Trust, tweeted his worry about rumors that the Chinese government did not share “critical public health information” because Chinese researchers wanted to ensure publication of their findings in high-profile journals first.
Less than 12 hours later, however, evolutionary biologist Edward Holmes of the University of Sydney published an “initial” sequence of the new coronavirus on virological. org, on behalf of a consortium led by Zhang Yong-Zhen of Fudan University in Shanghai. The next day, three groups working under China's National Health Commission posted another five sequences of the virus, gathered from different patients, on GISAID, a database primarily used for sharing data on influenza viruses.
The six sequences differ little from each other, which evolutionary biologist Andrew Rambaut of the University of Edinburgh says is “consistent with a point source”—meaning they likely came from the same batch of infected animals at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, which also sells birds, snakes, and rabbit meat. (No coronaviruses have ever been found in fish.) But the fact that cases surfaced over the course of 1 month suggests the source was more than one group of animals at one location, Farrar says: “It makes me worry that whatever the exposure was to, it went on for quite a long time.” Virologist Guan Yi of Hong Kong University agrees that the Wuhan outbreak was caused by multiple jumps from animal to human hosts “separately and independently.”
Whatever species spread the virus at the market may have picked it up from some natural reservoir. Many coronaviruses occur naturally in bats, and the new virus is closest to four bat viruses that have surface proteins capable of infecting human cells. Still, Rambaut cautions there may well be another natural host. “It's quite similar to a bat virus in parts of its genome, but not so much in other parts,” he says.
Farrar notes that most confirmed cases to date were mild, which means that even before health officials recognized the outbreak, the virus may have infected many other people who never sought medical care. That makes it premature to conclude the pathogen doesn't spread from human to human, he says. Nurses and doctors, too, may have been infected without anyone noticing, he adds: “With a coronavirus, I'd be very surprised if there wasn't some limited human-to-human transmission.” So far, cases have been confirmed by detecting nucleic acid from the virus, which disappears after patients recover. Now that the virus has been isolated, researchers can also develop antibody tests that pick up signs of past infection.
Limited as the outbreak appears to date, Farrar and others still worry that travel of hundreds of millions of people for the Lunar New Year celebration on 25 January could spread the virus from Wuhan, a major transportation hub, to other cities. “With people, food and animals move,” says Farrar, who suspects that this outbreak “is not going away anytime soon.”
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Science
Volume 367 | Issue 6475
17 January 2020
17 January 2020
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Copyright © 2020 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.
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Time to eradicate Chinese bad habits of consuming wildlife
Yunjian Luo 1, Yang Xiao 3, Qiang Xiao 2*,Xuefeng Sun 2,Tongchun Han2
1. Department of Ecology, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou 225009, China;
2. Chongqing University of Arts and Sciences, Chongqing 402160, China;
3. College of Biology and Environmental Sciences, Jishou University, Jishou 416000, China.
* Corresponding to: [email protected]
An outbreak of the SARS virus in Guangzhou, China, triggered a global public health crisis in 2003. Seventeen years later, a novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) is spreading rapidly from Wuhan across China (1) . Although the natural reservoir host (snakes, bats, or other animals) of SARS-CoV-2 is still controversial (2-3), the two global outbreaks have something in common; both are lethal, spread from person to person and originate from wild animals. Besides, other emerging viruses (e.g., Ebola, H7N9, MERS, and Nipah virus) break out frequently, and >70% of emerging viruses originate from wild animals (4).
In China, the consumption of wild animals is deemed as a distinctive and fashionable way to nourish and condition the body, and also a symbol of wealth and social status. According to a survey by Guangdong Provincial Forestry Administration, 45.4% of the people believe that consuming wild animal meat will increase their longevity, while the rest believe that it demonstrates a higher social status (5). Now, people can eat almost all the wild animals (e.g., bats, bears, birds, lizards, monkeys, pangolin, and snakes) that they see. Such extreme food culture can prompt viruses from their natural reservoir hosts to humans, jeopardizing public health. Moreover, it has spawned illegal wildlife trade and crazy poaching, which has caused many native wild animals of China [e.g., pangolin (Manis pentadactyla), masked civet (Paguma larvata) and yellow-breasted bunting (Emberiza aureola)] to be near extinction.
To eradicate bad habits of consuming wildlife, we should increase the awareness in all segments of our society of healthy diets and ecological protection of wildlife. It is urgent that we should treat the trade and consumption of wild animals as top national public security issues, and cut off the profit chain of wildlife trade from the source. For this goal, we need to work in three specific steps.(1) Amending and perfecting the existing laws and regulations on wildlife protection. Currently, the laws and regulations (e.g., Wildlife Conservation Law of the People's Republic of China) only focus on key wild animals but ignore others, and also implement penalties for the illegal sellers and poachers but ignore buyers. (2) Establishing an withdrawl mechanism for the domestication and breeding license of wild animals.To satisfy the increasing people's appetite for wild animals, the controversial licensing system was introduced for domestication and breeding of wild animals. The license system has become a protective umbrella for wildlife trafficking and poaching because there is no physical difference among raised and natural wildlife. (3) Establishing a unified coordinating department for wildlife protection. The previous protection of wild animals involves many management departments such as forestry, grassland, agriculture, marine, market supervision, public health and public security.These protections make the power more fragmented, and the coordination less efficient.
References
1. J. Cohen, D Normile, Science, 367, 234 (2020).
2. W. Ji, W. Wang, X.F. Zhao, et al., J Med Virol., 92(4), 433 (2020).
3. Z.L. Shi, P. Zhou, X.L. Yang, et al., bioRxiv, https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.22.914952.
4. D Cyranoski, Nature, https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-00129-x.
5. H.F., Shen, Hum. Health, (10), 76 (2014).
Strict management of living wild animals trade
Recently, an viral pneumonia (2019-nCov) was outbreak in the city of Wuhan, China (1). Until Jan 25, there are 923 people have infected and 26 have died in China. Now, Wuhan and other 13 cities of Hubei Province have strict limit inflow and outflow of people to stop the spread of the plague. Like the SARs, first reported 27 cases in Wuhan have exposed to wildlife animals in a farm produce market, which sell a great number of species of live animals including birds, rabbit, snake and bat. Now, researchers found that bat or snake is the most probable wildlife animal reservoir for the 2019-nCov (2,3).
Influenced by Chinese traditional cultures, people considered that the living wild animals can provide more nutrition and more delicious as food than farmed animals. And some animals, such as bat and snake are considered as medicinal materials in traditional Chinese medicine. Thus, myriad living wild animals were sold in over hundred thousand farm product markets every day in China. However, there is lack of regulation for source and food safety for living wild animals.
Meanwhile, China is one of the countries with fastest economic development, which accelerates invasion of alien species (4). Now, China have been one of the countries with most serious affected by invasive species (5,6). Many invasive species carry novel pathogen that could infect native relatives or other animals (5). In finally, these infected animals would threaten health of human, even life.
Thus, we call on the government of populous countries, such as, China, India, Nigeria, strictly control and monitoring the living wild animals trade. Especially in densely populated areas, living wild animals trade (including some invasive species) should be strictly forbidden.
References
1. J. Cohen, D. Normile, Science. 367, 234 (2020).
2. P. Zhou et al., http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.22.914952 (2020).
3. W. Ji, et al., J. Med. Virol. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/fut.22099 (2020).
4. W. Lin, et al., Plos One. 2, e1208 (2007).
5. W. Xiong, et al., Rev. Fish Biol. Fisheries. 25, 651 (2015).
6. H. Xu et al., Neobiota. 15, 1 (2012).
Novel coronavirus: recommendations to prevent its spread.
To the editor:
Novel coronavirus: recommendations to prevent its spread.
The interesting editorial by Cohen and Normile. [New SARS-like virus in China triggers alarm, Science] (1), provides useful information related to the new coronavirus that emerged in Wuhan.
In my view, it is important that the WHO encourages developing countries to adopt the National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN-CDC), it would also be a good idea for airlines companies to install body temperature sensors in their seats, sending this information in real time to epidemiological surveillance systems, with the list of frequent travellers. It would be convenient that the maritime companies send their frequent travellers information to these systems too.
A unique epidemiological surveillance system that monitors the population and particularly frequent travellers with body temperature sensors, would help minimize the impact of an outbreak.
Sincerely yours,
Carlos Polanco, Ph.D., D.Sc.
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México City, México.
Carlos Polanco is an Associate Professor at the Department of Mathematics in the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México City, México.([email protected]).
References
(1) Cohen J. and Normile D. (2020) New SARS-like virus in China triggers alarm. Science. 367:6475, 234-235.
Expanding epidemic of the novel coronavirus (nCoV) : Updated recommendations
With the lunar new year celebrations around the corner, it is indeed true that this outbreak has come at the worst time. The evolving developments now cast a shadow of doubt about whether the containment efforts are late. It also raises a doubt whether the infection was underestimated. The infections were detected as early as mid-December (1). However, infrared temperature screening areas were not installed at major transit points until January 14 (1). Local tourism agencies have also been banned from taking tour groups outside of Wuhan, China (1). These measures were put in effect only five weeks after the outbreak onset. This implies many infected passengers could have left the city being unscreened.
As of January 21, 2020, the infection has been exported to three countries. These include Japan, South Korea, and Thailand (2,3). Chinas national health commission has announced 77 new cases in Wuhan (1). The infection has also rapidly spread to other Chinese cities Zhejiang, Tianjin, and Shanghai (1). This pushes the total number of cases to a worrisome 302 as compared to the 200 cases a few days back (1). Furthermore, predicted calculations based on flight data and population reveal that there might be at least 1700 cases undiagnosed (2). This rapid spread should be a worrying sign for local health authorities and neighboring countries. Prior data suggested that the sole mode of transmission was from animal to human. However, cases have now been confirmed which presented with no history of exposure to animals or a visit to the local fish markets. This now indicates as proof for a human to human transmission.
Even though the risk to the American public is currently low, the centers for disease control (CDC) and prevention have provided recommendations to curb the ongoing health crises. On January 17, 2020, the CDC in collaboration with customs and border protection (CBP), implemented health screenings to detect ill travelers from Wuhan (4). These screenings are in effect at New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco airports (4). Furthermore, the CDC has also issued new clinical evaluation criteria for patients under investigation (5). These criteria have been based on MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV. They include :
1. Fever and symptoms of lower respiratory illness ( cough, dyspnea) and travel history from Wuhan in the last two weeks before the onset of symptoms (or) close contact with a person under investigation/ill for the past two weeks (5).
2. Fever and symptoms of lower respiratory illness ( cough, dyspnea) and contact with a lab-confirmed patient in the past two weeks (5).
Even though decisions and measures are in effect, we still have a long way to go because clearly this outbreak is far from over.
REFERENCES:
1. James Griffiths, Nectar Gan J. 6 people dead as China confirms Wuhan coronavirus can be spread by humans. CNN. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/21/asia/china-china-coronavirus-sars-int.... Published (2020). Accessed January 21, 2020.
2. Gan N, Xiong Y, Mackintosh E. China confirms new coronavirus can spread between humans. CNN. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/19/asia/china-coronavirus-spike-intl-hnk.... Published (2020). Accessed January 21, 2020.
3. Novel Coronavirus 2019 Situation Summary, Wuhan, China | CDC. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nCoV/summary.html#cdc-response. Published (2020). Accessed January 21, 2020
4. 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p0117-coronavirus-screening.html. Published (2020). Accessed January 21, 2020.
5. Clinical Criteria: Evaluating 2019-nCoV PUIs | CDC. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nCoV/clinical-criteria.html. Published (2020). Accessed January 21, 2020.