The Viral Pneumonia Of Unknown Origin In Wuhan Was Preliminarily Identified By The Expert Group.

Only 9 days from the first announcement, Wuhan's unidentified viral pneumonia was initially identified by the expert group.

In January 9th, according to CCTV news, the preliminary assessment of pathogen detection results showed that the expert group made public the progress in the etiology identification of unknown causes of viral pneumonia in Wuhan. Up to 21 in January 7, 2020, a new type of coronavirus was detected in the laboratory, and the whole genome sequence of the virus was obtained. 15 positive cases of new coronavirus were detected by nucleic acid detection method, and the virus was isolated from 1 positive samples, and the typical coronavirus morphology was observed under electron microscope.

Thanks to the progress of detection methods, the first announcement of the epidemic from the Wuhan Health Protection Committee in December 31, 2019 to the expert group initially identified as "new coronavirus" took only 9 days, compared with the previous SARS verification time as long as May has been greatly reduced.

According to the latest report of the Wuhan Health Protection Committee, there were 59 cases of viral pneumonia in January 5, 2020, of which 7 cases were severe, and the remaining patients had stable vital signs and no deaths. In January 8th, CCTV News reported that 8 patients were cured and discharged. In January 10th, according to the Changjiang Daily, most of the patients were mild to moderate. After treatment, the patient's condition can be controlled. At present, most of the other patients in the hospital are stable.

What is a new coronavirus?

According to CCTV news, coronavirus is a kind of pathogen which mainly causes respiratory and intestinal diseases. There are many regularly arranged projections on the surface of these viral particles, and the entire virus particles are like a crown of kings, hence the name "coronavirus". Coronavirus can also infect pigs, cattle, cats, dogs, mink, camels, bats, rats, hedgehog and many other mammals besides human beings. So far, there are six known human coronaviruses. Among them, four coronaviruses are common in the population, and their pathogenicity is low. They usually cause only mild respiratory symptoms similar to those of common cold. The other two coronaviruses are known as SARS coronavirus and MERS coronavirus, known as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, which can cause severe respiratory diseases.

The new coronavirus that causes the epidemic is different from the human coronavirus that has been found. Further understanding of the virus needs further scientific research.

Professor Xu Shuchang, a professor of respiratory system at Chinese University Hong Kong, has previously said that the severity of the disease is lower than that of SARS. He said that 1 of every 4 cases of SARS were serious cases, and the global mortality rate was about 9.6%. Although the pneumonia epidemic is still developing, no deaths have been reported so far, and 8 people have been discharged from hospital in January 8th, showing a relatively low severity.

Even pneumonia diagnosed by the new coronavirus is not without medicine. Professor Yuan Guoyong, Professor of infectious diseases at Department of Microbiology, University of Hong Kong School of medicine, has previously said that SARS has been studied earlier and found that protease inhibitors and other drugs can effectively treat respiratory diseases such as SARS, middle respiratory syndrome and other coronaviruses.

The above-mentioned expert group said that the nucleic acid, genome and antibody evidences found from the patients could be completed in a short time. It takes weeks to isolate and identify pathogenicity. The development of specific drugs and vaccines against a new pathogen may take several years to complete.

Normal human non viral hosts

Coronavirus is widely distributed in nature, and its hosts are mainly concentrated in birds and mammals. By comparing the complete genome sequence of the new coronavirus with the coronavirus of various animals, it may be possible to find the pathogen of "Wuhan pneumonia".

It is worth noting that animals with the most coronavirus in the animal kingdom are bats. Based on this, Yuan Guoyong believes that this "Wuhan pneumonia" or from bat began to spread to some kind of game, and then transmitted to humans.

According to a circular issued by Wuhan Health Council, preliminary investigation showed that no evidence of human transmission was found and no infection was found among medical staff. Nutshell network data show that in recent years, the virus caused by the prevalence of epidemics, zoonosis more than 75%. Such as SARS and bats, civet cats; MERS and camels; Ebola hemorrhagic fever (EBHF) and fruit bats, orangutans... Viruses that did not exist in human society were taken to human settlements through game markets or close contacts. Seafood products are usually associated with acute gastroenteritis virus, but not respiratory infectious virus.

In fact, human beings are not the normal hosts of coronavirus, and they need to reach certain conditions for human infection, such as decreased immunity, long exposure to virus or variation of virus. To judge whether the virus has human transmission condition, we need to analyze the epidemiological characteristics and contact history, virus sequence characteristics and evolutionary correlation, as well as the crowd propagation model. In short, if there are group cases and medical staff infection, it will be suspicious of human transmission.