Post by Admin on Jan 19, 2020 6:49:24 GMT
The Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, today informed the World Health Organization (WHO) of a confirmed case of a novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in a person who travelled to Wuhan, China. This is the second confirmed case of 2019-nCoV that has been detected outside of China, following confirmation of a case in Thailand on 13 January. Considering global travel patterns, additional cases in other countries are likely.
Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that cause illness ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. 2019-nCoV is a new strain that has not been previously identified in humans.
Much remains to be understood about the new coronavirus, which was first identified in China earlier this month. Not enough is known about 2019-nCoV to draw definitive conclusions about how it is transmitted, clinical features of disease, or the extent to which it has spread. The source also remains unknown.
The team of Chinese scientists probing the mysterious pneumonia-like illness that's struck 59 people have identified a new, never-before-seen strain of coronavirus in some of the patients, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Both SARS and MERS - which have previously broken out in Wuhan - are coronaviruses, but the current viral was not a match for either.
A new strain was detected in a sample taken from one patient. The scientists sequenced the genome of the virus, and found something wholly unique.
Further tests confirmed the presence of the virus in several other patients, according to the Wall Street Journal, but that doesn't mean that all of them have that strain, or that that's causing the illnesses.
SARS killed hundreds of people in China and Hong Kong in the early 2000s. But no cases have been recorded in the world since 2004.
But SARS, bird flu, Middle East respiratory syndrome and adenovirus have now been ruled out following investigations, authorities have said.
The outbreak – which began at the start of December – has prompted the closure of a seafood market in Wuhan's suburbs, where several patients worked.
China released the genetic sequence of a new coronavirus believed to be responsible for a cluster 0f unusual pneumonia cases in Wuhan. Phylogenetic analysis shows the coronavirus to be closely related to SARS CoV, the virus responsible for the SARS pandemic which began in China in 2003.
Further analysis is necessary, but this preliminary analysis shows the virus is also quite similar to other SARS-related coronaviruses which appear to be endemic to the area. Prior EcoHealth Alliance research has found evidence that these viruses are spilling into human populations. We are also conducting behavioral analysis with the goal of reducing risk for this spillover.
The virus responsible for the current outbreak in Wuhan has so far killed one person; fortunately it's not currently believed that the virus has the ability to spread human-to-human. Our work has shown that there is a large diversity of coronaviruses that are endemic to China.
Research into the coronavirus genome was lead by Dr. Yong-Zhen Zhang at the the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center & School of Public Health, in collaboration with the Central Hospital of Wuhan, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institute for Communicable Disease Control and Prevention, Chinese Center for Disease Control, and the University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia. It can be accessed and downloaded here.
A preliminary phylogenetic analysis of these 6 genomes is available at nextstrain.org/groups/blab/sars-like-cov. The pipeline to generate this analysis is openly available at github.com/blab/sars-like-cov.
Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that cause illness ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. 2019-nCoV is a new strain that has not been previously identified in humans.
Much remains to be understood about the new coronavirus, which was first identified in China earlier this month. Not enough is known about 2019-nCoV to draw definitive conclusions about how it is transmitted, clinical features of disease, or the extent to which it has spread. The source also remains unknown.
The team of Chinese scientists probing the mysterious pneumonia-like illness that's struck 59 people have identified a new, never-before-seen strain of coronavirus in some of the patients, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Both SARS and MERS - which have previously broken out in Wuhan - are coronaviruses, but the current viral was not a match for either.
A new strain was detected in a sample taken from one patient. The scientists sequenced the genome of the virus, and found something wholly unique.
Further tests confirmed the presence of the virus in several other patients, according to the Wall Street Journal, but that doesn't mean that all of them have that strain, or that that's causing the illnesses.
SARS killed hundreds of people in China and Hong Kong in the early 2000s. But no cases have been recorded in the world since 2004.
But SARS, bird flu, Middle East respiratory syndrome and adenovirus have now been ruled out following investigations, authorities have said.
The outbreak – which began at the start of December – has prompted the closure of a seafood market in Wuhan's suburbs, where several patients worked.
China released the genetic sequence of a new coronavirus believed to be responsible for a cluster 0f unusual pneumonia cases in Wuhan. Phylogenetic analysis shows the coronavirus to be closely related to SARS CoV, the virus responsible for the SARS pandemic which began in China in 2003.
Further analysis is necessary, but this preliminary analysis shows the virus is also quite similar to other SARS-related coronaviruses which appear to be endemic to the area. Prior EcoHealth Alliance research has found evidence that these viruses are spilling into human populations. We are also conducting behavioral analysis with the goal of reducing risk for this spillover.
The virus responsible for the current outbreak in Wuhan has so far killed one person; fortunately it's not currently believed that the virus has the ability to spread human-to-human. Our work has shown that there is a large diversity of coronaviruses that are endemic to China.
Research into the coronavirus genome was lead by Dr. Yong-Zhen Zhang at the the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center & School of Public Health, in collaboration with the Central Hospital of Wuhan, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institute for Communicable Disease Control and Prevention, Chinese Center for Disease Control, and the University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia. It can be accessed and downloaded here.
A preliminary phylogenetic analysis of these 6 genomes is available at nextstrain.org/groups/blab/sars-like-cov. The pipeline to generate this analysis is openly available at github.com/blab/sars-like-cov.