After the mammoth harm faced by people all over the globe due to the Coronavirus, China is sadly witnessing an outbreak of a new infection called the Langya virus.
Studies claim that a new virus is spreading quickly in the eastern part of China. First, earlier found the novel Langya henipavirus (LayV) in some provinces of Henan and Shandong in 2018, but scientists in the past week officially recognized the virus.
Talking about the virus transmission, scientists, based on studies, claim that the Langya virus is transmitted to humans via animals. The researchers even conducted some tests on wild animals and found LayV RNA; also, the virus is detected in domestic animals.
Currently, the LayV relates to the Mojiang virus very closely that was discovered in the southern parts of China in 2012.
The early patients who got infected with this virus were farmers, and professionals said that the virus was found in the throat swab samples of the infected ones. Currently, the infected ones are not only farmers, but the other farmers are factory workers only.
If you think about symptoms, the common symptoms seen in the infected ones were: fever, fatigue, cough, loss of appetite, and muscle aches; though there are no death reports made, health professionals suggest that we should be conscious of ourselves and our surroundings.
Also, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine states, “new henipavirus is associated with a febrile (fever causing) human illness.”
Adding further, Prof Wang Linfa of the Duke-NUS Medical School, a co-author of the NEJM paper, said LayV cases had “not been fatal or very serious,” and there is no need to panic as no death reports have been reported till now.
When researchers tried to find out how this virus can spread, they discovered that the family members of the infected patients who were in close contact showed no proximity with the Langya virus. But still, the scientists say that the sample size of their testing was too small, and it would not be right to claim that the virus cannot spread through humans.
But the cause of concern is that when scientists studied the LayV genome, they witnessed that it is a henipavirus, a category of zoonotic RNA viruses in which the Hendra virus and the Nipah virus are also counted. Both the viruses spread a colossal outbreak and reported high fatalities that forced people and health Organizations not to handle the Langya virus lightly.
Also, same as the starting of Coronavirus, humans don’t have any vaccines or cures for the LayV. The infected ones are prescribed standard medicines for fever, cough, etc.
With all this, many professionals with expertise in infectious disease claim that this virus can cause a massive outbreak around the globe as the climate changes and the cruel behavior of humans toward nature can increase the number of viruses that the human race will notice.
All the health Organizations and study centers are now concerned and have started their research on LayV and will do their best to figure out ways to slow down the spreading rate of LayV and find its cure.
