In an attitude article published on July 9 in Science, a diverse organization of infectious disease experts, environmentalists, wildlife biologists and other experts argue that a decentralized formula of global wildlife surveillance can simply – and – be established to identify viruses in wild animals that have the potential to infect and improve health before any other pandemic begins.
“It is very unlikely that they will know how animal viruses are spreading in the human population, yet coronaviruses alone have caused epidemics in humans 3 times in the last 20 years,” said co-author Jennifer A. Philips, MD, Ph.D. Reference. SARS, MERS and COVID-19 outbreaks. Philips is an associate professor of medicine and co-director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. “Even ten years ago, it would have been difficult to conduct global surveillance on the human-wildlife interface. But because of technological advances, it is now feasible and affordable, and it has never been more apparent how much is needed.”
Each animal has its own set of viruses, with some overlap between species. Often, an animal species and its viruses have lived in combination for so long that they have adapted with each other, and the viruses do not cause symptoms or only a mild to moderate disease. But when other animal species that don’t have much contact are combined, viruses have the opportunity to move from one species to another. Most viruses do not have the genetic equipment to infect other species. But viruses with such equipment can be fatal to a newly inflamed species without herbal immunity.
Human activity makes such contagions increasingly likely. As the world’s population continues to grow, demand for herbal resources is skyrocking. People are entering wild spaces to make room for new homes and businesses, and to access resources to fuel their economies and lifestyles. Wild animals are caught and sold for consumption, or as exotic pets in wildlife markets, where species are combined in overcrowded conditions and unsanitary conditions. Portions of wild animals are shipped worldwide in the form of trinkets or ingredients for classic or preferred medicines.
However, there is no strange formula in a position to stumble upon pathogenic viruses related to movement or products.
“Before this article, I spoke to friends and colleagues around the world investigating wildlife in Madagascar, Indonesia, Peru, Ecuador and asked them, ‘Where do they get their samples for detection?'” said co-author Gideon Erkenswick, Ph.D., associate postdoctoral researcher at Philips lab. Erkenswick is also Director of Field Projects International, a non-profit organization committed to the examination and conservation of tropical ecosystems.” In almost every and every situation, the answer’s nowhere.’ At the local level, no one has the time and resources to devote to this work. To locate new pathogenic viruses, we need to locate foreign volunteer collaborators and then get samples from the country, which is complicated and expensive. “
Philips, Erkenswick and their colleagues in the Wildlife Disease Surveillance Approach Group, in the clinical article, recommend the creation of a global tracking network to detect wildlife and its products at critical points such as wildlife markets. The concept would be for local groups of researchers and technicians to extract viral genomes from animal samples, temporarily display them at the site, and upload the series to a central database in the cloud. The burden and length of the required clinical apparatus has decreased in recent years, making this test affordable even in resource-constrained environments where the maximum of those hotspots are found.
“Now there’s a genetic sequencer that literally has the length of a USB stick,” Erkenswick said. “You can take this and some other materials to a rainforest and analyze a pattern of pathogenic virus-related sequences at the site within a few hours. I mean, if you have to do something like the virus that causes COVID-19, do you need to gather it, buy it, send it, threaten with greater exposure, damage the pattern and load months or years of delay, before perceiving what you have. There are other people with the experience and skills to make such paintings safely almost anywhere in the world, they just don’t have the tools.”
Once the viral series is downloaded, researchers around the world can also help them analyze them to identify animal viruses that may pose a risk to humans and expand a greater understanding of the global virus that is spreading in other environments. By comparing genomic series data, researchers can identify which circle of relatives belongs to an unknown virus and how connected it is to any pathogenic virus. They can also determine whether a virus carries genes related to the ability to cause disease in humans.