New fatal virus hits China: Here's all you need to know about the Langya virus

Health authorities in China have identified a novel virus which has infected at least 35 people so far in two provinces in Eastern China, The Guardian reports. The virus, officially named Langya henipavirus is now believed to have spread from animals to humans.

Quick facts

The novel virus was first detected in 2018, but scientists are only now officially identifying. In an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the researchers strongly suspect it was likely transmitted from animals to humans. They arrived at this conclusion after testing wild animals and finding the LayV viral RNA in more than a quarter of 262 shrews. The virus was also detected in 2% of domestic goats and 5% of dogs.Taiwan’s health authority is now monitoring the spread. The article said:

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

Symptoms

So far, of the 35 patients who caught the novel virus, none has died or experienced serious symptoms, one of the researchers told the Global Times. The patients presented with mild to moderate symptoms like fatigue, fever, a cough, loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting, headache and muscle pains.

It was also established in the paper that the patients had a history of contact with animals.The scientists say there is no cause for alarm:

There was no close contact or common exposure history among the patients, which suggests that the infection in the human population may be sporadic.

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