SADS-CoV or acute swine diarrhea: new coronavirus in pigs that could threaten humans
While we still don't know everything about SARS-CoV-2, which continues to circulate in many countries, a new coronavirus could threaten humans as well. A recent US study, which warns of a virus derived from pigs and potentially transmissible to humans.
While the second wave of the Covid-19 epidemic has been in the news in many countries, another coronavirus; this time pig, worries the specialists.
A recent US study, conducted by researchers at the University of North Carolina (United States), warns of a coronavirus derived from "swine acute diarrhea syndrome (SADS-CoVs)", which could potentially be transmitted to man.
The work, published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), evokes "the appearance of new human and animal coronaviruses", which would require surveillance and the implementation of new strategies, to avoid another epidemic.
SADS-CoV: this new coronavirus transmitted by pigs that worries specialists
The virus that could pose a threat is "a recently discovered highly pathogenic virus that likely evolved from closely related bat coronaviruses circulating in Rhinolophus bats in China and elsewhere."
After laboratory testing, the authors of this study noted that "the data demonstrate that SADS-CoV has a wide host range and has an inherent potential for spread between animal and human hosts, possibly using pig as an intermediate species."
A new virus that could be transmitted to humans
So far, this virus, which was discovered in pigs in China in 2016 (which reportedly caused acute diarrhea and increased the risk of piglet mortality by 90%), has not posed a threat to humans. Experts believed that it was not transmissible in human cells. But this recent work indicates that it could eventually threaten the population, contaminating human intestinal cells, unlike SARS-CoV-2, which mainly affects the lungs.