The deadly Wuhan virus could have its origin in a snake mutation

The authorities remain baffled by the I miss virus what is in check China. It was on December 12, 2019 when the Asian country had proof of the first patient for a strange coronavirus which, so far, there was no record. What the medical authorities could not expect is that, in a little less than a month, those infected will increase to more than 400 and 17 victims will be charged. Now, the origin seems to have been discovered.

When that young man entered the hospital in Wuhan, everything indicated that it was some type of viral pneumonia, when attending with symptoms such as high fever and severe respiratory problems. But it was much more than that: medical services were unable to identify the origin of the disease, something that puzzled them even more when new cases began to arrive with the same symptomatology. They faced something unknown to date.

The problem has triggered in just one month, when more than 200 people have suffered this strange disease and not only in China: Hong Kong, South Korea, Vietnam or the US already have cases of this unknown coronavirus. Soon studies began to try to understand what the origin was and soon a common bond was discovered: the first patients were from Wuhan and, in all cases, they had visited the Wuhan South China Seafood City, a market selling animals.

But now a study believes to have gone further and to have discovered the possible origin of this disease. Research conducted by Chinese scientists suggests that the virus comes from a snake. After locating the germ, which they have named 2019-nCoV, they have managed to study it to try to determine where it came from and the reasons for its virulence: and the analyzes indicate that it could have mutated within the world of ophidians.

What puzzled the experts the most was knowing that a coronavirus – a virus wrapped with a single-stranded RNA genome with positive polarity and helical symmetry – had such an important rate of severity and even mortality. In fact, I remembered the symptoms of SRAG (severe acute respiratory syndrome), which caused the death of 700 people, or the MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome), but the strain was different. However, they found a key.

Their bond allowed these researchers to discover that the origin could be animal and that a mutation It would have resulted in it spreading among humans. After comparing it with other known coronaviruses, they soon found that the virus was the mixture of one originating from bats but mixed with another of unknown origin. And that recombination of RNA went to snakes, as explained in the study published in the 'Journal of Medical Virology'.

Mutation after mutation

Nevertheless, that same virus has mutated again, now allowing snakes to transmit it to humans. A new recombination that is the one that is infecting human beings in a serious way. Experts already know that it is a virus that comes from ophidians, recombined again, and that it has been made life threatening for the human species, but they still don't know how to stop it and, much less, if it can be more dangerous in the short term.

In fact, this team of Chinese scientists does not close the possibility that can recombine again within the human being and that it can even be even more dangerous than it is today. It is also not known how contagious the 2019-nCoV is and what the route is for its spread. In fact, it will be this Thursday when WHO decides whether to declare the virus as an international public health emergency while is still investigating how to try to stop this strange virus.