Tracking the Origins of the Virus

Virologist Shi Zhengli Explores Bat Caves to Track the Origins of COVID-19

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“The mysterious patient samples arrived at the Wuhan institute of Virology at 7 P.M. on December 30, 2019.”-Jane Qiu

Shi was a virologist that had frequented the bat cave for the past 16 years. She attended a conference she was attending in Shanghai to hop over to the next train to Wuhan. While Shi's team at the Wuhan Institute raced to uncover the identity of the contagion, the illness to the novel corona virus had become known as the SARS-CoV-2. Over 2.4 million people across 210 countries had caught the virus the time of her first encounter, and COVID-19 was identified.

Emergence of New Infectious Disease

It has been long warned that the rate of emergence of the new infectious disease accelerated in developing countries, with high densities of people and animals to have increasingly mingled and moved about. It was crucial to pinpoint the source of the infection and the chain of cross species transmission. Shi's first encounter with the bat cave began in 2004, as she encroached near bat colonies in the caves near Nanning. She was encountered with abundant bats that have roosted themselves in the deep narrow caves. Shi and her colleagues had to like for hours to potential sites through the tight rick crevasses on the steep terrain. When guided by the tips from the local villages, Shi and her colleagues have been hiking for hours to potential sites, inching through the rock crevasses on the stomachs. Flying mammals are also known to be elusive, and her team was unable to hike for tight rock crevasses.

The expedition was the effort to catch the SARS culprit. Before SARS, the world had not been infected with the inkling of the corona viruses, named because of the spiky surfaces that resembles a crown, when seen under a microscope. The SARS outbreak was a when the most deadly virus had emerged. In the first virus hunting months in 2004, they used nets at the openings to wait for the nocturnal creatures to fall into the trap. Samples were gathered to check for genetic materials, which didn't come out easily in quick trials.

Before she gave up, she had been able to gain access to a diagnostic kit for testing antibodies, produced by people with SARS. The researchers were able to extract data from the horseshoe bats. The three horseshoe bat species contained antibodies to the SARS virus.This was when they identified how the presence of the virus was both ephemeral and seasonal, but the antibody reaction could last up to years. Shi's team used the antibody tests to narrow down the list of locations and the bat species to pursue the quest for the genomic clues. The pathogen hunters with years of work were able to discover hundreds of bat-borne viruses, with the genetic diversity.

It was surely an ordeal. Shi sampled constant mixes of different viruses, in order to create a great opportunity for dangerous new pathogen to emerge. Near Shiton Cave, many villages were sprawled among the lush hillsides in the region to be known for their roses, and berries. It was here that they had drawn blood samples from more than the 200 residents in four of the village where it was found that 3 percent of them had the antibodies against the virus. Three years earlier Shi's team had been called into investigate the virus profile of the mine shaft in Yunnan's mountainous regions in Mojiang County, where six of the miners suffered from the pneumonia like disease, an two of them died. After sampling the cave for a year, the group of teams discovered diverse corona viruses in six of the bat species. This was most likely due to the growing human populations, encroaching the wildlife, which had led to the unexpected use of land and therefore further aggravated the potentials for a pandemic.

December 30, was when she had gone on the train back to Wuhan ready to face her nightmare. Shi and her colleagues discussed ways to immediately started ways to discuss the patients' samples. She used polymerase chain reaction to amplify the genetic material from the seven patients, and she had been going through the lab records.

By January 7, the Wuhan team determined that the new virus had indeed caused the disease that those patients suffered, which was a conclusion that had based results from the analyses by PCR. The genomic sequence was very identical to the Yunnan horseshoe bat diseases that have been identified earlier. Since then, researchers have been publishing the 4500 genomic sequences of the virus, and it was shown that there appeared a common ancestry. Given the stability of the virus scientists speculate that the virus probably had been very mild before they caused alarm.

The burgeoning wildlife markets sold a variety of animals of bats, civets, pangolins, badgers, and etc. This means that although, humans could have identified a direct correlation with the virus, independent teams have suggested that pangolins may have been the initial host.

It was on February 24th that China announced consuming wildlife illegal. Wildlife trade and consumption have been center of attention for problems, but it has been recently identified that in late 2016, pigs across four farms in Qingyuan county has also been the site where the SARS outbreak had also shown effects.

New revelations about the corona virus have been coming into spotlight. Researchers have also identified how the pathogens are able to enter the human lung cells by the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2, as other groups have been screening for drugs that can be blocked.

Many scientists insist that we should move beyond just responding if the deadly pathogens arise. The best way that they say is prevention and knowledge before the wildfire spreads through the forest.

Reference: Scientific American June 2020, Chasing Plagues Virologist Shi Zhengli Crawled Through Bat Caves In China to Track The Origins of the First Sars Virus and The Current Pandemic