A new virus of animal origin that has infected dozens of people in China, called the Langya virus, is causing reactions around the world. Causing fever, fatigue, cough, nausea and headache, should this virus concern us? The Press takes stock with experts who want to be reassuring.
Posted at 8:00 a.m.
So far, 35 people have been infected with this virus in China, according to a report published in early August by the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), a leading medical journal in the United States.
Scientists speculate that the shrew, a small mammal with a pointed snout, could be the animal involved in its transmission to humans. The infections were found in the Chinese provinces of Shandong (east) and Henan (central).
More than half of the patients had fever, fatigue, cough. A third suffered from nausea, headaches and vomiting. Some had abnormalities in blood cells and others experienced impaired liver and kidney function, the report said.
No serious or fatal cases of Langya have been identified so far, underlines with the GlobalTimes virologist Linfa Wang, of the Duke-NUS School of Medicine in Singapore, one of the authors of the report.
“Not worrying at all”
The experts are reassuring. “It is not at all worrying, because there is no evidence that it is transmitted from human to human”, supports Alain Lamarre, professor specializing in immunology and virology at the National Institute for Scientific Research. (INRS).
The patients, mostly farmers, had neither “close contact” nor “common exposure”, underlines the study, which assumes a “sporadic” infection in humans.
There is no reason to worry and think that it will spread in the population.
Alain Lamarre, professor specializing in immunology and virology at the National Institute for Scientific Research
In addition, the cases were recorded over a period ranging from 2018 to 2021. “It does not date from last week. Thirty-five cases in four years, do not get upset, especially since they are not connected! exclaims Denis Archambault, researcher and expert in virology and immunology at the University of Quebec in Montreal. China would likely have had many more cases if the virus was transmitted between humans, the expert says.
The shrew in question
Researchers from universities and institutes in China, Singapore and Australia were studying zoonoses, infectious diseases transmitted from animals to humans, when they identified the Langya henipavirus.
This new virus is in the same family as the Nipah virus, the cause of epidemics in South and Southeast Asia, and the Hendra virus, transmitted by bats and causing a highly lethal infection in horses or humans. “It’s often very localized and it doesn’t cause major epidemics,” says Lamarre.
A serological survey of animals detected the virus in a few goats, dogs and small wild animals that gravitated around the patients. However, the majority of cases have been identified in shrews.
“The shrew seems to be the reservoir of the virus,” says Archambault. In infectiology, the reservoir is the species which mainly participates in the reproduction cycle of a pathogenic agent likely to contaminate other species.
According to the researchers who helped write the report, more research is needed to better understand the illnesses associated with the virus. “We now know that it exists, so it’s to be continued,” concludes Mr. Archambault.
With Agence France-Presse