American scientists explain having found in a bat a DNA 100% identical to that of the pathogens found in humans.
The bat attracts all the attention! While the European Night of this animal is being organized this weekend in France, the bat is now suspected by a team of American and Saudi virologists to be at the origin of the new coronavirus. Unpublished work, published Wednesday by the US Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.
“There have already been several announcements of discoveries of viruses resembling MERS-CoV in animals but none matched exactly genetically as is the case with the pathogen found in a bat”, explains Ian Lipkin, director of CII and a co-authors of the study. And the researcher added, “the bat carrying this virus was located near the place, a few kilometers, where the first case of human infection was observed in September 2012 in Saudi Arabia. ”
But how did these researchers achieve this result? It was by taking more than a thousand samples from seven species of bats in areas of Saudi Arabia where MERS cases were identified that they were able to identify a fecal sample of bats that contained a coronavirus which DNA was 100% identical to that of pathogens found in infected people.
However, scientists specify that “since transmission between humans is very difficult, we believe that there could be an intermediate vector to transmit the coronavirus to people”. Enough to relaunch the track of a team of Dutch researchers who designated the dromedary as the intermediate host of the virus at the beginning of August. In other words, an animal which lives more in contact with humans and which could have contracted the virus from bats.
In conclusion, Ian Lipkin explains that his team continues to search for clues to the presence of the virus in other wild and domestic animals. “We are still investigating the mechanisms by which this pathogen causes MERS-CoV in humans,” he says.
To date, 93 people have been infected with the MERS-CoV coronavirus and 46 people have died. The most affected country remains Saudi Arabia with 39 victims recorded in the Wahhabi kingdom, since the appearance of the virus in September 2012.
.
