KEYSTONE/AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein
China is struggling with a new, strange virus: This has jumped from animals to humans and is causing symptoms similar to Covid. Scientists confirm the report.
A new virus similar to Covid has apparently broken out in China. The so-called Langya henipavirus is transmitted from animals to humans. International scientists and Taiwan confirm the outbreak, writes Blick, citing information from the Taiwanese newspaper Taipei Times.
That «New England Journal of Medicine» published on Thursday that a new henipa virus had been identified in China. This is associated with a fever-causing disease.
Dogs and goats are carriers of the virus and, in the worst case, can lead to organ failure in humans. At least 35 people have contracted the henipavirus in China, the deputy director of Taiwan’s Center Disease Control told reporters on Sunday, the reports «Taipei Times».
The people affected had symptoms such as fever, nausea, headache and fatigue, among other things. A large proportion also showed a decrease in white blood cells.
However, no human-to-human transmission was reported in any of the cases, the Taiwan Center Disease Control said in the Taipei Times. The 35 infected had had no contact with each other. Even tracing would not have shown human-to-human transmission.
However, a study of domestic animals showed that two percent of the goats tested and five percent of the dogs tested tested positive.
Test results in wild animals have shown that the shrew may be a natural reservoir of Langya henipavirus. So far there have been no human deaths.
