Brace yourselves. It’s another virus among us. Doctors in China have reported a newly detected virus.
“Langya” virus has infected 35 people in two provinces in eastern China, Taiwan’s Centers for Disease Control (CDC) confirmed.
The virus – officially named Langya henipavirus (LayV) – is new, which means it has not infected humans before.
However, the virus is in the Henipavirus family, of which two species have been previously identified – the Hendra virus and Nipah virus.
The two often produce both severe and fatal illnesses among people and as of right now, there are no vaccines or treatments.
Henipavirus is classified as biosafety Level 4 and have fatality rates between 40 and 75 percent, according to the data collected by the World Health Organization.
Of the 35 patients who are infected with the Langya virus, none have died, and none have been serious cases, The Sun reported.
Scientists in China reported that the patients were tested because they were febrile and their symptoms included fever, fatigue, a cough, loss of appetite, muscle pain, nausea, headache, and vomiting.
The patients also had a history of contact with animals, the paper added.
However, due to the cluster of cases, the virus may likely have passed between humans already.
The paper said: “There was no close contact or common exposure history among the patients, which suggests that the infection in the human population may be sporadic.”
“Contact tracing of nine patients with 15 close-contact family members revealed no close-contact LayV transmission. But our sample size was too small to determine the status of human-to-human transmission for LayV.”
Scientists suspect that shrews were the most obvious carrier of the Langya virus among 25 animals studied.
The new virus is reminiscent of the early days of the Covid pandemic when China reported there was only a handful of novel coronavirus cases, which were also thought to be only related to animal transmission.
