Taiwan health authorities have announced the discovery of a new virus, according to a study by scientists, the Taipei Times reports on Tuesday, August 9, 2022. The new pathogen, dubbed Langya henipavirus (LayV), is in China’s Shandong and Henan provinces occurred, according to The Independent.
The shrew as a natural reservoir
According to the first known information, this new virus seems to be close to Covid-19 since it is transmitted from animals to humans. A test carried out on 25 animal species shows that the virus was mainly diagnosed in shrews. Small mammals could thus be a natural reservoir of LayV.
No human-to-human transmission has been reported to date.
Taiwan Center for Disease Control (CDC) deputy director Chuang Jen-Hsiang said Sunday, Aug. 7, that at least 35 people have already been infected with the new virus. So far no deaths have been registered.
However, the situation does not seem alarming at the moment, as these 35 cases were registered between April 2018 and August 2021, as Professor François Balloux of the UCL Genetics Institute points out on Twitter.
No vaccine against viruses of this family
A study published Aug. 4 in the New England Journal of Medicine reports that high fevers affected Langya henipavirus patients. Coughing, exhaustion, loss of appetite or even a decrease in white blood cells are also among the symptoms observed.
LayV is a member of the henipavirus family, which includes two previously identified viruses: Hendra and Nipah. There is no vaccine today to counteract its effects. In severe cases, the death rate can reach 75%, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
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