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US President Donald Trump has chosen to call covid-19 the “Chinese virus”, a qualification that is part of the trade war that, almost personally, the tycoon has waged against the Asian giant. But the coronavirus could actually be called the American virus, given the latest research on its origin.
Although the first cases were diagnosed in the Chinese city of Wuhan a year ago, before the disease spread to Asia and then to the rest of the world, the World Health Organization (WHO) on its website ensures that “the place in which an epidemic is detected for the first time is not necessarily the same in which it began ”, therefore“ it cannot be excluded that the virus circulated elsewhere, first in silence ”.
In recent months, researchers from several countries have reported cases that would go unnoticed long before December 2019, based on wastewater analysis and post-hoc blood tests.
A study conducted by researchers linked to the U.S. government retroactively identified that 39 people from three states in the country had already developed antibodies to the coronavirus two weeks before the alarm occurred in China.
The data throws new variables into the virus origin scenario, a study needed to “better understand the dynamics of transmission, particularly how the virus evolved and the potential link between various sources of infections,” according to the ‘WHO.
Animal origin
Scientists agree that the disease has an animal origin. But the question is: what caused it to be transmitted to humans? According to Simon-Lorière, a French scientist who has studied the coronavirus.
Everything indicates that the origin of the virus is in the bat, which is like “a large coronavirus deposit,” he adds. But this is unlikely to have been transmitted directly to humans, so it remains to be determined which animal was the intermediate.
“It is possible that the intermediary is an animal that has a receptor for the virus very close to that of man,” according to Simon-Lorière.
Meanwhile, the North American study conducted by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention was based on blood samples from donations made between December 13, 2019 and January 17, 2020. The 7,389 samples analyzed were collected in a routine donation organized by the Red Cross in nine US states.
Out of 1,912 donation samples made between December 13 and 16, 39 were positive (26 in California and 16 in Oregon or Washington).
Another 67 samples containing the virus were identified among donations made between 30 December 2019 and 17 January 2020. The average age of the infected people was 52 years and the majority were men.
Why is it important to know the origin?
“Understanding how an epidemic started is essential to prevent further transmission of the virus to humans,” stresses the WHO.
The aim is “to apply measures to prevent the appearance of a SARS-CoV-3, 4 …”, such as a ban on the breeding of certain animals, adds Simon-Lorière.
Therefore, during the SARS epidemic in 2002, a ban on the consumption of civets and the closure of their farms helped prevent the virus from being transmitted back to humans. This small mammal, consumed in China, had been identified as the intermediate host of the epidemic.
Agencies
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