zoonoses

Amid an unprecedented international security and coordination operation, the MV Hondius has arrived at the port of Granadilla, in Tenerife, where epidemiologists and members of the Foreign Health Service will examine the passengers and crew, who have not shown any symptoms of hantavirus so far. Once assessed, they will leave the ship, which is moored in a dock, in small boats to the port, grouped by nationality – they come from 23 different countries. From there, they will board military vehicles to reach Tenerife South Airport, from where they will be repatriated on various flights. The 14 Spaniards and a member of the WHO from Africa are bound for Gómez Ulla Hospital (Madrid) to undergo quarantine. Once the process is complete, the cruise ship will refuel and sail to the Netherlands with part of the crew on board and the body of one of the three fatalities.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has reported a public health event involving a cruise ship sailing in the Atlantic Ocean that departed from Argentina. To date, two cases of hantavirus infection—generally acquired through exposure to the urine or feces of infected rodents—have been laboratory-confirmed, and there are five additional suspected cases. Of these seven individuals, three have died, and one is currently in intensive care in South Africa. “The risk to the general population remains low. There is no reason to panic or impose travel restrictions,” said Hans Henri P. Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe.

According to the newspaper El País, the Catalan Regional Government has reported a case of swine flu —not swine fever, which is caused by another virus and does not affect humans— in an 83-year-old person in the province of Lleida. The newspaper points out that, as the patient had no contact with pigs that could transmit the virus, they may have been infected by another person.

An international team has estimated global vaccination coverage and the incidence of 104 diseases transmitted by cattle, poultry and pigs in 203 countries and territories over the last two decades. Their conclusions are that current vaccination coverage of global livestock populations may be insufficient to prevent various diseases, such as anthrax, rabies and contagious nodular dermatosis, of which 17 outbreaks have been recorded in Spain. The results are published in PNAS.

Viruses that cause avian influenza are capable of replicating at temperatures higher than a typical fever, according to a study in in vitro models and mice. ‘Fever-resistant replication could help explain why avian viruses and pandemic influenza viruses with avian PB1 cause more severe disease in humans,’ the authors write in the journal Science.

US Department of Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr's proposal to let bird flu spread in turkeys and chickens to identify surviving animals would be "dangerous and unethical", a group of scientists warns in a policy forum article published by Science. In addition to the suffering of infected animals, allowing a highly lethal, rapidly evolving and contagious virus to follow a natural course of infection "would prolong exposure for farmworkers, which could increase viral adaptation and transmission risks for poultry, other peridomestic animals, and humans," they warn.

A team in the US has tested the efficacy of baloxavir, an antiviral already on the market for treating common flu, against avian influenza in mice. The results, published in the journal Nature Microbiology, show that it is more effective than the currently recommended oseltamivir (Tamiflu) except when the infection is via the mouth, in which case it is equally effective. According to the authors, baloxavir ‘could be considered for the potential treatment of serious H5N1 virus infections in humans’.

A team of researchers from the USA has analyzed the B lymphocytes of seven healthy people in whom no exposure to H5 influenza viruses, such as the avian flu virus, had been documented. The results show that they present antibodies capable of recognizing this type of virus, which, according to the authors, could represent “a first line of defense” in the event of a pandemic. The results are published in the journal Science Immunology.

A review published in Science estimates that 2 % of rodent species are hyper-reservoirs, hosting and transmitting more than three pathogens to humans, including Lyme disease, Lassa fever and plague. In addition, the authors estimate that 10 % of rodents are reservoirs for one to three pathogens. These are especially so-called synanthropic species - animals that live close to humans and are able to adapt to these environments - such as black rats, Norway rats and house mice.

A study carried out in China has analyzed tissues from 461 fur animals, mostly farm-raised. They found 125 virus species, 39 of which presented a high risk of interspecies transmission. According to the authors, who publish the results in the journal Nature, “there is a need for more extensive and regular surveillance to assess the public health risks that could result from fur animal farming”.