Named the symptoms of a new deadly genipavirus discovered in China

China is sounding the alarm: 35 people have already become ill with the “newly identified” Langya virus, which is believed to have been transmitted to humans from shrews. This infection belongs to a family of viruses known to be fatal in 75% of cases. But so far, none of the cases reported in two Chinese provinces have resulted in deaths.

Doctors have raised the alarm over a brand new virus that has infected dozens of people in China. Daily Mail. The Langya genipavirus — or LayV — has been found in 35 people in China’s eastern provinces of Henan and Shandong. It belongs to a family of viruses known to kill up to three-quarters of the people it infects in severe cases.

But so far, none of the new cases have been fatal, and most of them are mild, patients are showing flu-like symptoms.

The new virus is believed to have been transmitted by shrews, small mammals in the same family as hedgehogs and moles.

The new study found that the virus was first detected in humans in 2019, with the most recent cases reported this year.

Chinese experts studying the virus believe human cases are “sporadic”. They are still trying to figure out if it can be passed from person to person.

Researchers led by the Beijing Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology released their findings on the LayV virus in a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Chinese scientists detected the first case until January 2019 in Shandong, before a cluster of 14 cases was found in both provinces the following year.

During the first year of the pandemic from January to July 2020, no infections were found and researchers suspended work to prevent the spread of COVID. But since this month, 11 more cases of infection with the new virus have been found.

The researchers tracked symptoms in patients to see how badly people were affected by the virus.

The most common symptom suffered by patients was fever, and all infected people had a fever. This was followed by fatigue (54%), cough (50%), loss of appetite (50%), muscle pain (46%) and nausea (38%). About 35% of those infected suffered from liver problems, and 8% experienced deterioration in kidney function.

The scientists also tracked the virus in animal populations to see if it was spread by domestic and wild animals, or if human-to-human transmission was to blame.

Chinese researchers found the virus in 71 of 262 shrews — small, mole-like mammals — tested in the two Chinese provinces where the outbreak began. Along with shrews, the virus has also been detected in dogs (5%) and goats (2%).

The study material states: “There was no close contact or shared history of infection among the patients, suggesting that infection in the human population may be sporadic. Contact tracing of nine patients with 15 close-contact family members did not reveal close-contact transmission of LayV. But our sample size was too small to determine the status of human-to-human transmission of LayV.”

Langya is a hepinavirus, the same family as the Nipah virus, which is a deadly pathogen commonly found in bats. Like COVID, Nipah can be spread through the air. But it is far more deadly, killing up to three-quarters of the people it infects. The World Health Organization (WHO) has included it in the list of viruses most likely to cause the next pandemic.

The brain edema virus was first detected in Malaysia and Singapore in 1999, when 300 cases resulted in 100 deaths. There is currently no Nipah virus vaccine approved for humans, but at least eight are currently being tested on animals, including one developed by the University of Oxford.

Read also: “A new genipavirus threatens the world from China: the infection was brought by rodents”