The virus has already killed half of those infected. Scientists in virology and infectious diseases have details about the genetics and capabilities of the deadly coronavirus of NCoV, but they don’t know how to stop it.
NCoV comes from same deadly SARS Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome that broke out in the Middle East last year and has killed seven of the thirteen known to have it worldwide.
Six in Saudi Arabia, 2 in Jordan and Britian and Gemany
Micheal Osterholm director for Infectious Disease Research and Policy and a professor at the University of Minnesota, “What we know is of great concern to public health, what we don’t know is terrifying.” Working swiftly after discovering NCoV last Spetember Britain’s Health Protection Agency had sequenced part of its genome and mapped out a “phylogenetic tree” of its links.
The virus is adapted to infecting humans and may be treatable using medicines similar to the ones used for SARS, which emerged in China in 2002 and killed a tenth of the 8000 people infected. The unknown piece of the puzzle is how many people may be infected and circulating the virus.
Scientists are collaborating worldwide and sharing research
So far one patient with the virus has allowed scientist to link the virus to bats. “We’d feel more comfortable if we could trace the source to an animal.” If so it would mean the infections are just crossing over like the bird flu that keeps popping up. Another patient became ill in Germany after working with goats and camels.
The World Health Organization says the virus is persistent
HPA scientists said the cluster provided strong evidence that NCoV, which like other coronaviruses probably spreads in airborne droplets, can pass from one human to another “in at least some circumstances.” The most likely outcome is the virus comes to a dead end and just goes away and becoming extinct. “There’s nothing in the virology that tells us this virus is going to stop being transmitted. It’s just a matter of time.”
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