Six coronaviruses out there, which one will spread next?

New Delhi: As a new variant of coronavirus spreads panic — keeping governments and health authorities on their toes from China to India — researchers have been stressing for long on the fact that identifying new viruses in animals and quickly determining their potential to infect people is a key way to reduce global health threats.

According to a recent study by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases that conducts and supports research at the US National Institute of Health (NIH), six coronaviruses are known to cause disease in people, but so far only two of them — SARS-CoV and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronavirus — have caused large outbreaks of fatal illness in people.

Before the Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) began doing the rounds, the last identified coronavirus killed nearly 25,000 piglets in 2016-17 in China emerged from horseshoe bats near the origin of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV), which emerged in 2002 in the same bat species.

Named swine acute diarrhea syndrome coronavirus (SADS-CoV), it thankfully did not infect people, unlike SARS-CoV which infected more than 8,000 people and killed 774.

SADS-CoV began killing piglets on a farm near Foshan in Guangdong Province in late October 2016.

Investigators initially suspected porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) as the cause. PEDV is a type of coronavirus common to swine that had been identified at the Foshan farm.

Detection of PEDV ceased by mid-January 2017, yet piglets continued to die, suggesting a different cause. Scientists say separating sick sows and piglets from the rest of the herd helped stop the outbreak of SADS-CoV by May 2017.

By conducting a detailed genetic analysis of the virus and comparing it with available genetic information on different viruses from various geographic locations and host species, the investigators concluded that the 2019-nCoV appears to be a virus that formed from a combination of a coronavirus found in bats and another coronavirus of unknown origin. (IANS)

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