China reports hundreds of cases of newly identified virus

Hundreds of cases have been recorded in China of a newly identified virus, according to researchers.

The novel Langya henipavirus LayV was first detected in the north-eastern provinces of Shandong and Henan in late 2018 but was only identified by scientists last week.

The health authority in Taiwan is monitoring the spread, and the disease is likely to have been transmitted from animals to humans, scientists said. The researchers found LayV-virulent RNA in more than a quarter of 262 shrews, a finding that the shrew may be a natural reservoir. The virus was also detected in 2% of domestic goats and 5% of dogs.

The initial investigations into the virus were outlined in correspondence published by scientists from China, Singapore and Australia in the New England Journal of Medicine NEJM last week.

In people, the virus caused symptoms such as fever, fatigue, cough, loss of appetite and muscle aches. The scientists said that all of the people who had been infected had a fever. There have been no deaths from LayV to date because of the fact that the virus was the only potential pathogen found in 26 of the 35 people. The NEJM paper co-author, Wang Linfa, told the state-run Global Times that the LayV cases had not been fatal or very serious so far and there was no need for panic. It was still not clear whether the virus can be transmitted between people, researchers said. Most of the 35 cases were in farmers, and other infected individuals included factory workers. The researchers found that there was no close-contact LayV transmission from nine patients with 15 close-contact family members, but our sample size was too small to determine the status of human-to-human transmission.

The LayV genome was sequenced by scientists and determined it is a henipavirus, a type of zoonotic RNA viruses that also includes Hendra virus and Nipah virus. Hendra virus, which affects horses and humans, has been found in Australia and Nipah virus, which has caused disease outbreaks in south-east Asia and has been associated with high death rates.

LayV is most closely related to the Mojiang virus, which was discovered in southern China.

Taiwan Centers for Disease Control CDC announced on Sunday it would implement genome-sequencing and surveillance measures for the disease, according to Taiwan's Central News Agency.

Chuang Jen-hsiang, the deputy director general of the Taiwan CDC, told a press conference that the agency was looking at routes of transmission and would collaborate with the Council of Agriculture to investigate a similar disease in species native to Taiwan.

Infected diseases experts have warned that the destruction of nature and the climate crisis will increase the risk of viruses being transmitted from animals to humans in events known as zoonotic spillovers.