New virus detected! In China, at least 35 people get affected

New Virus

Taiwan's Centers for Disease Control reported that in China's Shandong and Henan provinces in the northeast, at least 35 people had been infected by Langya henipavirus (LayV). In China, A Zoonotic Henipavirus in Febrile Patients.

Symptoms of LayV

The infections found in LayV have symptoms that include flu, including fever, cough, headache, fatigue, loss of appetite, muscle soreness, and nausea.

Infected persons

More than twenty-six of the 35 patients are infected with LayV, and no other pathogen is present. For all the 26 patients, fever for 100% of the patients, fatigue for 54%, cough for 50%, anorexia for 50%, myalgia for 46%, nausea for 38%, headache for 35%, and vomiting for 35%. Some of the abnormalities of thrombocytopenia are 35%. Leukopenia is for 54%, the impaired liver is for 35%, and the kidney is for 8%.

Virus isolation

In eastern China, there was a history of animal exposure with infected LayV patients. Some swab samples are detected from the new virus and put under metagenomic analysis and subsequent virus isolation.  

The LayV genome had 18,402 nucleotides and is an identical genome from a henipaviruses in the Paramyxoviridae family known for single-stranded RNA viruses. Henipaviruses in bats, shrews, and rodents can infect humans and cause fatal diseases.

Human to the human transmission

LayV infection in the human population is sporadic. Nine patients in close contact with 15 family members had no close-contact LayV transmission. The status of human-to-human transmission for the LayV sample size of the virus is too small to determine.

The Mojiang virus is another form of henipavirus that cause lethal pneumonia where it had a cross-section with the LayV virus. The world is already battling Covid-19 and Monkeypox infections and has now detected this new virus, LayV.