Nadia had a cough and it wouldn’t go away. She didn’t feel like eating. X-rays and ultrasounds, blood work, all turned up nothing. So a decision was made to test Nadia – a four-year-old Malayan tiger at the Bronx Zoo in New York – for the latest bug going around, the one that had already put much of the world, including her zoo, into lockdown: COVID-19.
Since researchers in Wuhan, China, where the outbreak began, first published the genetic code of the virus, hundreds of labs around the world have followed suit. Their efforts to join the dots among patients, under the microscope as well as on the ground, mean this pandemic is being tracked like never before – in real time. Already the family tree of COVID-19 is helping us understand where the outbreak came from, how it took hold in different continents – and where it’s going next.
“It’s like a manuscript written in a language made up of only four letters: A, C, G and U, which is more commonly called T,” Vasan says. How they are arranged on the page can change how the virus behaves. Runaway COVID-19 outbreaks in parts of Europe and the Americas have fuelled speculation that more deadly or infectious strains of the virus may be circulating already – some early studies have suggested as many as 30 kinds of SARS-CoV-2. But most scientists stress the mutations so far haven’t changed how the virus behaves.
Hodcroft says the very first genomes out of China were just one mutation apart. Six months on, the branches of the tree still aren’t very long – samples of the virus vary by only about 10 recurrent mutations on average and their roots all go back to a common relative: that first genome sequenced in Wuhan. That’s how scientists know the spillover from animals into humans happened recently in China, likely in November 2019.
Sequencing or tracking the virus’s “genetic passport” has now revolutionised how health authorities fight pandemics, says Professor Benjamin Howden at the Doherty Institute, and will become “critically important as countries ease restrictions”. In some cases in Victoria, he says, clusters in which people had no known links to each other were uncovered after the lab team traced a connection in the virus’s genes.
“We might not ever find the very first because so many people get no symptoms or mild symptoms,” Balloux says.Vasan warns there’s a danger in any outbreak: in the race to find a cure, scientists could pick up the first sample that comes their way and run with it - in the wrong direction.
It's a 5th dimensional virus, isn't it
Coronavirus revelation: Dr Sean Hross Historian endorsed by Karen Hudes and Board of Governors
Because the virus is originated in Australia. That is why aus insisted to investigate China, because it knows so well aus spreads virus to world.
F%$king Carol Baskin
Carole Baskin did it!
Australians genetically related to tigers confirmed
Australia Latest News, Australia Headlines
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