BRAUN: There are way worse animal-borne diseases than COVID
Author of the article:Liz Braun
Publishing date:Apr 13, 2021 • 13 hours ago • 3 minute read • Join the conversation
Officials inspect a well and catch bats on May 21, 2018 as they try to stop the spread of the deadly Nipah virus in the Indian state of Kerala.
Officials inspect a well and catch bats on May 21, 2018 as they try to stop the spread of the deadly Nipah virus in the Indian state of Kerala. PHOTO BY AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES /Toronto Sun
Article content
We’re going to need a bigger vaccine.
A new report on the Nipah virus — which kills 75% of the infected — is just the thing to keep world-weary COVID worriers awake all night.
According toBBC Future, Nipah is on the top-10 list of pathogens being carefully watched by the World Health Organization (WHO) for their potential to cause a public health emergency.
Nipah is a zoonotic virus; fruit bats are the natural host. There is no treatment for Nipah and the mortality rate runs between 40% and 75%.
Those who become sick with Nipah usually have a cough and have trouble breathing; what follows can be severe respiratory illness or deadly encephalitis.
Or both.
There have already been breakouts in Bangladesh, Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, India, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Vietnam, and Thailand.
(An outbreak in Kerala — a state on India’s southwestern coast —in 2018 killed 17 of the 19 infected; the following year, one case was nipped in the bud by the extensive contact tracing system Kerala put into place.)
Advertisement
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.
Article content
Nipah has an incubation period of five to 14 days, but extreme cases of up to 45 days mean an infected person has a lot of time to unwittingly infect others.
It’s so dangerous it has been classified as a bioterrorism threat in many places in the world. Only a handful of specialized labs are even permitted to study Nipah.
Nipah is transmitted by fruit bats to other animals and to humans; it also spreads from human to human. It’s in the fruit bat’s urine and feces and can be spread through contact with their droppings — or through eating and drinking products contaminated by their droppings.
The bats live in date trees, among other fruit trees. They drink the juice of date palm trees at night, often urinating in collection pots as they do so.
As BBC Future describes, people who buy a juice the next day from a local vendor, then become infected with the disease; the virus can live for about three days in some fruit juices and even longer in artificial date palm sap.
Fruit bats live in trees that overhang outdoor markets. Their droppings can contaminate the food shoppers purchase from the market.
Wherever they roost — churches, schools, buildings in major tourist spots — they leave their droppings; that guano is used as fertilizer in some rural parts of Cambodia and Thailand, and those who sell the fertilizer, knowing nothing about Nipah, encourage the bats to roost nearby.
Virus hunters track the bats and their activity and discovered the bats will fly up to 100 kilometres a night to find fruit — a long journey necessitated by human encroachment on wild habitats and the deforestation that accompanies that. Bat habitats are also destroyed by the drought and forest fires amplified by climate change.
Advertisement
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.
Article content
The good news is that virus hunters are onto Nipah and watching it closely. And a clinical study of a potential vaccine is already underway.
But long before Nipah creates another bigger, badder global pandemic, mosquito-borne illnesses will likely have cut a terrible swath through the earth’s population.
MORE ON THIS TOPIC
Avenue Cibi e Vini, located at 10519 Islington Ave. in Kleinburg.
At least 105 possible COVID-19 exposures at Vaughan restaurant
A
GUNTER: Canada rides the Trudeau Wave of COVID ineptitude
Due partly to climate change and our warming world, the Aedes vittatus mosquito has now been found in in Cuba. BBC Future reports that this mosquito carries dengue, yellow fever, Zika, chikungunya, and all the most dangerous mosquito-borne diseases, except malaria.
The mosquito is endemic to the Indian subcontinent and has never been seen in the Western Hemisphere.
Until now.
gavi.org
bbc.com
bbc.com
torontosun.com
Author of the article:Liz Braun
Publishing date:Apr 13, 2021 • 13 hours ago • 3 minute read • Join the conversation
Officials inspect a well and catch bats on May 21, 2018 as they try to stop the spread of the deadly Nipah virus in the Indian state of Kerala.
Officials inspect a well and catch bats on May 21, 2018 as they try to stop the spread of the deadly Nipah virus in the Indian state of Kerala. PHOTO BY AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES /Toronto Sun
Article content
We’re going to need a bigger vaccine.
A new report on the Nipah virus — which kills 75% of the infected — is just the thing to keep world-weary COVID worriers awake all night.
According toBBC Future, Nipah is on the top-10 list of pathogens being carefully watched by the World Health Organization (WHO) for their potential to cause a public health emergency.
Nipah is a zoonotic virus; fruit bats are the natural host. There is no treatment for Nipah and the mortality rate runs between 40% and 75%.
Those who become sick with Nipah usually have a cough and have trouble breathing; what follows can be severe respiratory illness or deadly encephalitis.
Or both.
There have already been breakouts in Bangladesh, Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, India, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Vietnam, and Thailand.
(An outbreak in Kerala — a state on India’s southwestern coast —in 2018 killed 17 of the 19 infected; the following year, one case was nipped in the bud by the extensive contact tracing system Kerala put into place.)
Advertisement
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.
Article content
Nipah has an incubation period of five to 14 days, but extreme cases of up to 45 days mean an infected person has a lot of time to unwittingly infect others.
It’s so dangerous it has been classified as a bioterrorism threat in many places in the world. Only a handful of specialized labs are even permitted to study Nipah.
Nipah is transmitted by fruit bats to other animals and to humans; it also spreads from human to human. It’s in the fruit bat’s urine and feces and can be spread through contact with their droppings — or through eating and drinking products contaminated by their droppings.
The bats live in date trees, among other fruit trees. They drink the juice of date palm trees at night, often urinating in collection pots as they do so.
As BBC Future describes, people who buy a juice the next day from a local vendor, then become infected with the disease; the virus can live for about three days in some fruit juices and even longer in artificial date palm sap.
Fruit bats live in trees that overhang outdoor markets. Their droppings can contaminate the food shoppers purchase from the market.
Wherever they roost — churches, schools, buildings in major tourist spots — they leave their droppings; that guano is used as fertilizer in some rural parts of Cambodia and Thailand, and those who sell the fertilizer, knowing nothing about Nipah, encourage the bats to roost nearby.
Virus hunters track the bats and their activity and discovered the bats will fly up to 100 kilometres a night to find fruit — a long journey necessitated by human encroachment on wild habitats and the deforestation that accompanies that. Bat habitats are also destroyed by the drought and forest fires amplified by climate change.
Advertisement
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.
Article content
The good news is that virus hunters are onto Nipah and watching it closely. And a clinical study of a potential vaccine is already underway.
But long before Nipah creates another bigger, badder global pandemic, mosquito-borne illnesses will likely have cut a terrible swath through the earth’s population.
Avenue Cibi e Vini, located at 10519 Islington Ave. in Kleinburg.
At least 105 possible COVID-19 exposures at Vaughan restaurant
A
GUNTER: Canada rides the Trudeau Wave of COVID ineptitude
Due partly to climate change and our warming world, the Aedes vittatus mosquito has now been found in in Cuba. BBC Future reports that this mosquito carries dengue, yellow fever, Zika, chikungunya, and all the most dangerous mosquito-borne diseases, except malaria.
The mosquito is endemic to the Indian subcontinent and has never been seen in the Western Hemisphere.
Until now.
The next pandemic: Nipah virus?
Nipah virus can kill as many as three out of four people it infects. Since the fruit bat that carries the virus often comes into contact with humans, here we explain why the development of drugs and vaccines for the disease is becoming increasingly more urgent.
gavi.org
The new mosquito bringing disease to North America
The discovery of a novel mosquito on Guantanamo Bay reveals how globalisation is threatening to unleash the next pandemic.
bbc.com
The other virus that worries Asia
The death rate for Nipah virus is up to 75% and it has no vaccine. While the world focuses on Covid-19, scientists are working hard to ensure it doesn't cause the next pandemic.
bbc.com
BRAUN: There are way worse animal-borne diseases than COVID
We’re going to need a bigger vaccine.
