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Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsa...rom-dogs-infects-people-in-malaysia-and-haiti
New coronavirus, likely from dogs, infects people in Malaysia and Haiti
November 5, 20214:22 PM ET
Michaeleen Doucleff 2016 square
Early in 2017, a team of medical personnel, including doctors, nurses and volunteers, returned home to Florida after volunteering at a clinic in Haiti. Soon after their return, 20 members of the team began to feel a bit under the weather. "They had a slight fever and didn't feel 100% right," says virologist John Lednicky at the University of Florida. "But they weren't very sick."
At the time, Zika virus was circulating in Haiti, and health officials were worried the travelers might have been infected, potentially importing the mosquito-borne illness to Florida. So officials took urine samples from each traveler and asked Lednicky to test for Zika.
Lednicky ran the standard PCR tests for the virus, and they all came back negative. But he wasn't satisfied. He had a hunch that the urine samples did contain a virus — not Zika but something else.
So he took a little bit of the urine from six of the travelers and added it to a special solution of monkey cells. The goal was deceptively simple: to see if any viruses in the urine would infect the monkey cells, start replicating and grow to detectable levels. Then Lednicky could collect the virus's genes and identify it.
"This is what we do in our lab," Lednicky says. "We cast a wide net. We try to isolate viruses. And oftentimes, when we do that, the unexpected happens."
Indeed, the unexpected occurred.
"We found a coronavirus," he says. And not just any coronavirus, but one that many scientists believe may be a new human pathogen — likely the 8th coronavirus known to cause disease in people. Turns out, this coronavirus in the Haiti travelers has cropped up previously, on the other side of the globe.
Coronavirus From Dogs Likely Causes Pneumonia In Kids
Back in May, scientists at Duke University, reported they had detected a nearly identical virus coronavirus in children at a Malaysian hospital...
New coronavirus, likely from dogs, infects people in Malaysia and Haiti
November 5, 20214:22 PM ET
Michaeleen Doucleff 2016 square
Early in 2017, a team of medical personnel, including doctors, nurses and volunteers, returned home to Florida after volunteering at a clinic in Haiti. Soon after their return, 20 members of the team began to feel a bit under the weather. "They had a slight fever and didn't feel 100% right," says virologist John Lednicky at the University of Florida. "But they weren't very sick."
At the time, Zika virus was circulating in Haiti, and health officials were worried the travelers might have been infected, potentially importing the mosquito-borne illness to Florida. So officials took urine samples from each traveler and asked Lednicky to test for Zika.
Lednicky ran the standard PCR tests for the virus, and they all came back negative. But he wasn't satisfied. He had a hunch that the urine samples did contain a virus — not Zika but something else.
So he took a little bit of the urine from six of the travelers and added it to a special solution of monkey cells. The goal was deceptively simple: to see if any viruses in the urine would infect the monkey cells, start replicating and grow to detectable levels. Then Lednicky could collect the virus's genes and identify it.
"This is what we do in our lab," Lednicky says. "We cast a wide net. We try to isolate viruses. And oftentimes, when we do that, the unexpected happens."
Indeed, the unexpected occurred.
"We found a coronavirus," he says. And not just any coronavirus, but one that many scientists believe may be a new human pathogen — likely the 8th coronavirus known to cause disease in people. Turns out, this coronavirus in the Haiti travelers has cropped up previously, on the other side of the globe.
Coronavirus From Dogs Likely Causes Pneumonia In Kids
Back in May, scientists at Duke University, reported they had detected a nearly identical virus coronavirus in children at a Malaysian hospital...
