Chinese scientists have recovered a previously unknown virus from an infected individual and generated a full genetic sequence of it, a key step in efforts to learn more about the cause of an outbreak of unusual pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, state-run media reported Thursday.
Fragments of the same virus were picked up in testing of 15 patients among the 59 who have been identified as infected with the mysterious pneumonia.
The speed of the findings is impressive; the first case in this outbreak became ill less than a month ago.
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“Preliminary identification of a novel virus in a short period of time is a notable achievement and demonstrates China’s increased capacity to manage new outbreaks,” the World Health Organization’s representative in China, Dr. Gauden Galea, said in a statement.
But more work is needed to identify what animal species transmitted the virus to people and whether there are other cases elsewhere, Galea said.
The report on CCTV appears to be the first official confirmation from Chinese authorities that they believe a new virus is responsible for this outbreak — specifically a coronavirus, a type of virus in the family that includes SARS and MERS.
When viewed under an electron microscope, it exhibits the crown-like halo that gives coronaviruses their name, said Xu Jianguo, identified by CCTV as the leader of the preliminary assessment of the test results and a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
The outbreak is occurring in Wuhan, about 700 miles south of Beijing. Wuhan is a leading center for virology research in China, and infectious diseases experts watching this outbreak have predicted scientists there would quickly find the cause.
“The virology team investigating this outbreak at Wuhan and China CDC are world class and they are making good progress on identifying the causative agent,” Malik Peiris, a microbiologist at the University of Hong Kong, told STAT.
Peiris was one of the scientists who first identified the coronavirus that caused the 2003 SARS outbreak, which infected more than 8,000 people and killed nearly 800 in China, Hong Kong, and several other Asian countries as well as in Toronto, Canada.
The first known case in the Wuhan outbreak became noticeably ill on Dec. 12, according to a statement released Sunday by the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission. The discovery of an outbreak and identification of a new virus in a period of less than one month is exceptional, experts said.
“I am stunned by the timeline and speed of this isolation and characterization, if it’s all true,” said Matthew Frieman, a coronavirus expert at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
The community of scientists who research emerging infectious diseases has been speculating for days that the source of the outbreak was a new coronavirus, a class of viruses that has shown itself adept at making the leap from animals to people. Coronaviruses originate in bats but are able to infect a number of mammals.
Confirmation that scientists have the genetic sequence of the virus will increase pressure on China to release at least part of that sequence, so that health facilities around the world know what to look for as they try to detect possible cases from this outbreak.
In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday instructed doctors to ask patients with severe respiratory infections whether they have been to Wuhan. Hong Kong and other countries in Southeast Asia are isolating any such cases until they can be tested for influenza, rhinoviruses, and other viruses that cause colds and flu.
This type of very broad net will draw in many people who were in or near Wuhan and who have a respiratory tract infection but who have nothing to do with this outbreak — especially in the middle of flu season. That will eat up resources and the time of doctors, laboratories, and sick people who don’t need to be isolated.
“If the Chinese truly have sequenced the virus and they’ve demonstrated that it’s present in other patients, that’s means there’s a PCR diagnostic test available. And the Chinese need to make that available to the rest of the world immediately,” said Ralph Baric, a coronavirus expert at the University of North Carolina.
“And the longer they wait, the more likely the scientific community will go from a positive response to a negative response, in terms of how China is handling this outbreak,” he said.
The CCTV report did not provide details on the type of coronavirus that has been discovered — for instance if it is one of several SARS-like viruses that have been found in bats in China. A number of these SARS-like viruses are able to infect human tissue cells in the laboratory, suggesting they might be able to spill over into people if given the right circumstances.
Xu said more research on the new virus is needed.
There has been limited information about the nature of the illness in people who have been infected. Chinese authorities have said no one has died from this infection; seven, however, were in critical condition as of Sunday. In a statement that same day, the WHO said that the main symptom was fever; some patients had difficulty breathing.
The CCTV report also did not indicate whether scientists investigating the outbreak had identified the source of the virus.
Baris said coronaviruses could jump to people directly from bats, which are eaten in China. But this virus could have used what is known as an intermediate host — an animal species that becomes infected with a bat virus that then transmits it to people.
During the SARS outbreak, it was determined that palm civets, a wild animal eaten as a delicacy in southern China, were transmitting the virus. Chinese authorities ordered a widespread culling of civets to help stop the outbreak.
The Wuhan outbreak has been linked to a large seafood market that also sells live exotic animals for consumption. The market was closed and decontaminated on Jan. 1. But it is important to know if other markets are selling infected animals, Peiris said.
“If it can jump once, then it will jump again,” he said of the virus.
The WHO said Wednesday that Chinese authorities believe the virus “does not transmit readily between people.”
Earlier statements from the Wuhan Municipal Health Authority said there has been no person-to-person spread, but disease experts challenged that claim, saying it is impossible to rule out at this stage in the exploration of a new disease.
“I don’t know how you know that at all,” Frieman said of China’s claim there is no person-to-person transmission. He noted the number of cases reported makes it seem unlikely that animal-to-human transmission is the only way this virus spread.
There have been at least one or two clusters of cases within families that have raised suspicions of limited person-to-person spread, a source familiar with the outbreak told STAT.
News of the pneumonia cases first emerged on Dec. 30, when the local health authority told hospitals to be on the lookout for cases. The next day Chinese authorities informed the WHO that they were dealing with what looked like an outbreak caused by an unknown virus.
MILWAUKEE (AP) — Whooping cough is at its highest level in a decade for this time of year, U.S. health officials reported Thursday.
There have been 18,506 cases of whooping cough reported so far, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. That’s the most at this point in the year since 2014, when cases topped 21,800.
The increase is not unexpected — whooping cough peaks every three to five years, health experts said. And the numbers indicate a return to levels before the coronavirus pandemic, when whooping cough and other contagious illnesses plummeted.
Still, the tally has some state health officials concerned, including those in Wisconsin, where there have been about 1,000 cases so far this year, compared to a total of 51 last year.
Nationwide, CDC has reported that kindergarten vaccination rates dipped last year and vaccine exemptions are at an all-time high. Thursday, it released state figures, showing that about 86% of kindergartners in Wisconsin got the whooping cough vaccine, compared to more than 92% nationally.
Whooping cough, also called pertussis, usually starts out like a cold, with a runny nose and other common symptoms, before turning into a prolonged cough. It is treated with antibiotics. Whooping cough used to be very common until a vaccine was introduced in the 1950s, which is now part of routine childhood vaccinations. It is in a shot along with tetanus and diphtheria vaccines. The combo shot is recommended for adults every 10 years.
“They used to call it the 100-day cough because it literally lasts for 100 days,” said Joyce Knestrick, a family nurse practitioner in Wheeling, West Virginia.
Whooping cough is usually seen mostly in infants and young children, who can develop serious complications. That’s why the vaccine is recommended during pregnancy, to pass along protection to the newborn, and for those who spend a lot of time with infants.
But public health workers say outbreaks this year are hitting older kids and teens. In Pennsylvania, most outbreaks have been in middle school, high school and college settings, an official said. Nearly all the cases in Douglas County, Nebraska, are schoolkids and teens, said Justin Frederick, deputy director of the health department.
That includes his own teenage daughter.
“It’s a horrible disease. She still wakes up — after being treated with her antibiotics — in a panic because she’s coughing so much she can’t breathe,” he said.
It’s important to get tested and treated with antibiotics early, said Dr. Kris Bryant, who specializes in pediatric infectious diseases at Norton Children’s in Louisville, Kentucky. People exposed to the bacteria can also take antibiotics to stop the spread.
“Pertussis is worth preventing,” Bryant said. “The good news is that we have safe and effective vaccines.”
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AP data journalist Kasturi Pananjady contributed to this report.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
How a sperm and egg fuse together has long been a mystery.
New research by scientists in Austria provides tantalizing clues, showing fertilization works like a lock and key across the animal kingdom, from fish to people.
“We discovered this mechanism that’s really fundamental across all vertebrates as far as we can tell,” said co-author Andrea Pauli at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna.
The team found that three proteins on the sperm join to form a sort of key that unlocks the egg, allowing the sperm to attach. Their findings, drawn from studies in zebrafish, mice, and human cells, show how this process has persisted over millions of years of evolution. Results were published Thursday in the journal Cell.
Scientists had previously known about two proteins, one on the surface of the sperm and another on the egg’s membrane. Working with international collaborators, Pauli’s lab used Google DeepMind’s artificial intelligence tool AlphaFold — whose developers were awarded a Nobel Prize earlier this month — to help them identify a new protein that allows the first molecular connection between sperm and egg. They also demonstrated how it functions in living things.
It wasn’t previously known how the proteins “worked together as a team in order to allow sperm and egg to recognize each other,” Pauli said.
Scientists still don’t know how the sperm actually gets inside the egg after it attaches and hope to delve into that next.
Eventually, Pauli said, such work could help other scientists understand infertility better or develop new birth control methods.
The work provides targets for the development of male contraceptives in particular, said David Greenstein, a genetics and cell biology expert at the University of Minnesota who was not involved in the study.
The latest study “also underscores the importance of this year’s Nobel Prize in chemistry,” he said in an email.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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