Many experts believe the virus leaped to a pangolin, which is part of the wildlife trade in the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China. The COVID-19 disease is known to be caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which has jumped from bats to an intermediate host animal, before making residence in humans. The most recent spillover event, the COVID-19 pandemic, has sparked the initiation of studies and experiments on how to stem the infection, and possibly, to develop new vaccines or therapeutics to treat patients hit by the life-threatening virus. Zoonotic pathogens have to surpass a series of barriers to jumps to humans, so to better understand how a spillover happens, there needs to be a greater understanding of these barriers to predict or prevent epidemics in the future. Spillover is a common event in fact, more than two-thirds of human viruses are zoonotic. Zoonotic spillover, defined as the transmission of a pathogen from an animal to a human, is a poorly understood phenomenon that presents a global public health threat. Therefore, analyzing mammalian viruses sheds light on cross-species spillover, with potential benefits for public health.
Human interaction with animals is a significant risk factor for a multitude of high impact zoonoses, including many bat-origin viral diseases. Image captured and color-enhanced at the NIAID Integrated Research Facility (IRF) in Fort Detrick, Maryland. Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 Transmission electron micrograph of SARS-CoV-2 virus particles, isolated from a patient. The most significant risk for zoonotic disease transmission occurs at the human-animal interface through direct or indirect human exposure to animals, their products (e.g., meat, milk, eggs.) and/or their environments. Zoonotic diseases are a group of infectious diseases naturally transmitted between animals and humans. This process is called zoonosis, a term that refers to infectious diseases that are transmissible to humans from other animal species. Most human infectious diseases are initially transmitted from animals, including the Ebola virus, the H1N1 influenza virus, the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the SARS coronavirus (SARS), MERS virus, and now, the potent novel coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of an organism its only purpose for existing is to make more viruses.
Since they were first described, these pathogens have caused many outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics, with many being deadly.
But what is zoonotic spillover and how do they occur? Zoonotic spillover events like the current novel coronavirus pandemic present threats to human health.
0 kommentar(er)
