Coronavirus Might Be Affecting The World For The Next 18 Months Or More While WHO Says The Virus Will Most Likely Not Retreat For Summer
Source: Covid-19 News Mar 07, 2020 4 years, 8 months, 6 days, 18 hours, 18 minutes ago
Virologists, epidemiologists, genomicists and even infectious disease experts are now painting a bleak scenario, considering preliminary reports and studies, that the
SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that causes the
Covid-19 disease is going to continue wreaking havoc for at least 18 months or so globally.
There are basing their predictions on the fact that : 1) The virus is not weakening as it evolves or mutates but rather it could be gradually adapting or maybe it just came with varied properties that no one knows until experts gradually unravel its characteristics, and 2) The realistic time frame an effective vaccine that could be developed and used for a coronavirus of such a nature.
Experts are warning that it is futile to compare it to the influenza virus or common cold in any manner.
Already new research are emerging that in terms of attaching itself to human cells, it first has the ACE2 receptor platform and even for that , it could be using a variety of proteases to prime the spike proteins not just an identified protease called TMPRSS2. (
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)30229-4?rss=yes)
Then it has recently been discovered that the new SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has a mutated gene similarly found on the HIV virus, it is also able to attack human cells via the target called furin, which is an enzyme that works as a protein activator in the human body. Typically many proteins are inactive or dormant when they are produced and have to be “cut” at specific points to activate their various functions which furin does in the human
Typically, a virus uses the outreaching spike protein to hook on to the host cell, but normally this protein is inactive. The cleavage site structure’s role is to trick the human furin protein, so it will cut and activate the spike protein and cause a “direct fusion” of the viral and cellular membranes.
It has been shown that when compared to the initial ACE2 mode of entry, this binding method is more than a 1,000 times efficient. (
https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/breaking-latestcoronavirus-research-reveals-that-the-virus-has-mutated-gene-similar-to-hiv-and-is-1,000-times-more-potent-)
These later findings might complicate the development of treatment protocols and also vaccines not to mention as it also continues to evolve and mutates and even develop more subtypes.
Chinese researchers and doctors themselves are saying that despite the government officials trying to paint a picture that the epidemic is peaking in China and that things are normalizing, the situation is far from that and in fact certain emerging preliminary studies are showing a possible scary scenario which they do not just want to comment just yet.
Meanwhile the World Health Organization (WHO) says that the coronavirus most unlikely to disappear with the coming of summer.
There is no evidence right now to suggest that the new coronavirus will disappea
r in summer, a senior expert with the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday (March 6), urging countries to fight Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, decisively at the current stage.
Dr Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme, told a daily briefing, warning against the assumption that the virus would just disappear on its own in the summertime like influenza.
He said, "We do not know yet what the activity or behaviour of the virus will be in different climatic conditions. We have to assume the virus will continue to have the capacity to spread."
Dr Ryan stressed that the disease can emerge anywhere on the planet. For instance, Ebola very often emerged in Africa, while the last pandemic influenza H1N1 emerged in North America.
For more on the latest about the
SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, keep checking at:
https://www.thailandmedical.news/articles/coronavirus
