Were snakes the source of Chinas coronavirus outbreak?
Posted by EarthSky Voices in Human World | January 26, 2020
A report suggests that snakes the Chinese krait and the Chinese cobra might have been the original source of the coronavirus thats triggered an outbreak of deadly infectious respiratory illnesses in China this year.
The illness was first reported in late December 2019 in Wuhan, a major city in central China, and has been rapidly spreading. Since then, sick travelers from Wuhan have infected people in China and other countries, including the United States.
Using samples of the virus isolated from patients, scientists in China have determined the genetic code of the virus and used microscopes to photograph it. The pathogen responsible for this pandemic is a new coronavirus. Its in the same family of viruses as the well-known severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), which have killed hundreds of people in the past 17 years. The World Health Organization (WHO) has named the new coronavirus 2019-nCoV.
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