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China sounds the alarm after detecting 35 cases of the new and dangerous Langya virus

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China alarmas nuevo virus Langya
  • Again! It’s a reminder of 2019 when Covid-19 began to spread.
  • China sounds the alarm after detecting 35 cases of the novel Langya virus.
  • We tell you about the symptoms.

ANOTHER HEALTH ALERT COMES FROM CHINA. Like those days back in 2019 when the appearance of Covid-19 was announced, China sounds the alarm again after detecting 35 cases of the new and dangerous Langya virus. It originates in animals and has never infected humans before.

The Taiwan Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that the Langya virus, officially called Langya henipavirus (LayV), has so far infected 35 people in two different provinces in the eastern part of the country. They explain why it is dangerous.

China sounds the alarm after detecting 35 cases of the new Langya virus

China warns of new Langya virus

Photo: Twitter

This virus is dangerous since it’s completely new to the scientific community as it had not infected humans before so there are no vaccines, treatments or natural immunity to this disease, according to The Sun.

Still, experts have already established that the Langya virus belongs to the Henipavirus family and two species of this family have been identified before: the Hendra virus and the Nipah virus. Both can cause serious and fatal diseases in humans.

High danger

China warns of new Langya virus

Photo: Twitter

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the Henipavirus family has been classified as biosafety level 4, which means it has a case fatality rate of between 40 and 75 percent. In other words, any virus in this family can be deadly.

Despite the danger of the virus, Chinese experts said that none of the 35 infected patients they have detected so far have died and none of the cases have been serious, according to the Global Times. For now, they continue to monitor patients and track the virus.

How was the disease detected?

Photo: Twitter

Langya virus patients sought medical attention because they had a fever and also exhibited symptoms such as cough, fatigue, loss of appetite, muscle pain, nausea, headache and vomiting, Chinese scientists said in an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). All patients said they had contact with animals.

At this point, the virus could have been transmitted between humans, although “contact tracing of nine patients with 15 close contact family members did not reveal close contact transmission of LayV,” the report says, although scientists acknowledged that the size of the sample “was too small to determine the status of person-to-person transmission for LayV.”

Where does this new virus come from?

Photo: Twitter

«There was no close contact or history of common exposure among the patients, suggesting that infection in the human population may be sporadic,» the document adds. So far, scientists have studied 25 animals trying to find the source of the virus, according to The Sun.

They suspect that shrews could be carriers of the Langya virus. Meanwhile, zoonotic diseases, which are those that are transmitted from animals to humans, continue to cause concern, especially after Covid-19 arrived to cause a deadly global pandemic.

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