Virus World

Gilead Sciences has provided doses of an experimental antiviral drug to doctors for the emergency treatment of a small number of patients infected by the new coronavirus. Gilead, based in Foster City, Calif., also said it has formalized an agreement with Chinese authorities to conduct a clinical trial of the drug remdesivir in patients infected with the coronavirus. Health authorities have been searching for a treatment for China coronavirus infections, which lack an approved drug or vaccine. Several drugmakers have said they are trying to develop a vaccine, which could prevent but not treat infections. Researchers had been hoping to study whether Gilead’s remdesivir and other antivirals could work as treatments. Unlike some of the other antivirals being examined, Gilead’s drug isn’t approved for use in humans by regulators in the U.S. or internationally. Unapproved drugs are sometimes put into use or in testing in emergencies when health authorities believe the drug could help patients who otherwise lack good treatments.

Separately, the drug was administered to an infected patient in Washington state, researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine on Friday. The man, 35 years old, had traveled to Wuhan, the Chinese city where the outbreak started, and after returning to the U.S. was the first person in the country to test positive for the China coronavirus. The patient was given remdesivir on the seventh day of his hospitalization, Jan. 26, and the following day the patient’s clinical condition improved. As of Jan. 30, the patient remains hospitalized, but “all symptoms have resolved with the exception of his cough, which is decreasing in severity,” the researchers wrote. On the day he was treated with the Gilead drug, the patient’s fever reached 39.4 degrees Celsius (102.9 degrees Fahrenheit). The following day it dropped to 37.3 degrees Celsius (99.1 degrees Fahrenheit) and declined into the normal range over subsequent days, the paper said....

NEJM Publication reporting treatment of patient in USA (Jan. 31, 2020):

https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa2001191

EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak speaks with The Scientist about how pathogens like 2019-nCoV jump species, and how to head off the next pandemic. An outbreak of a new virus known as 2019-nCoV, which began in Wuhan, China, in December, has now sickened more than 900 people and killed at least 26. Efforts to contain the outbreak have caused major disruption in China, particularly in Wuhan and nearby cities, where authorities have stopped most forms of transportation. While researchers quickly identified and sequenced 2019-nCoV, many questions remain about the novel coronavirus, including which species first passed it to humans.

The Scientist spoke with Peter Daszak, the president of the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance and an infectious disease researcher who’s done extensive research on emerging viruses in China and elsewhere. He talked with us about how 2019-nCoV fits in with other coronaviruses, including the virus that causes SARS, and how future events might be prevented. 

Peter Daszak: There’s a lot being done on how coronaviruses infect people from animals, because we’ve had a few events where they’ve jumped from animals into people, including from livestock. So for MERS, we know the real key is to know what the host cell receptor is—that’s the protein on the surface of cells that viruses bind to and invade. So if we share the same cell surface receptor that the virus uses in bats or in camels or in pigs, then there’s a risk of that virus invading us. For SARS coronavirus, the cell surface receptor is called ACE2, angiotensin converting enzyme 2. We share that with bats, and [the virus] uses the same receptor [in bats and humans]. And . . . because this paper . . . just came out from the Wuhan [Institute of Virology] group, we now know that the new virus also uses that same surface receptor....

How contagious is the virus?

The scale of an outbreak depends on how quickly and easily a virus is transmitted from person to person. While research has just begun, scientists have estimated that each person with the Wuhan coronavirus could infect somewhere between 1.5 and 3.5 people without effective containment measures. That would make the new virus roughly as contagious as SARS, another coronavirus that circulated in China in 2003 and was contained after it sickened 8,098 people and killed 774. Respiratory viruses like these can travel through the air, enveloped in tiny droplets that are produced when a sick person breathes, talks, coughs or sneezes. These droplets fall to the ground within a few feet. That makes the virus harder to get than pathogens like measles, chickenpox and tuberculosis, which can travel a hundred feet through the air. But it is easier to catch than H.I.V. or hepatitis, which spread only through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person.

How contagious is the virus?

The scale of an outbreak depends on how quickly and easily a virus is transmitted from person to person. While research has just begun, scientists have estimated that each person with the Wuhan coronavirus could infect somewhere between 1.5 and 3.5 people without effective containment measures. That would make the new virus roughly as contagious as SARS, another coronavirus that circulated in China in 2003 and was contained after it sickened 8,098 people and killed 774. Respiratory viruses like these can travel through the air, enveloped in tiny droplets that are produced when a sick person breathes, talks, coughs or sneezes. These droplets fall to the ground within a few feet. That makes the virus harder to get than pathogens like measles, chickenpox and tuberculosis, which can travel a hundred feet through the air. But it is easier to catch than H.I.V. or hepatitis, which spread only through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person.....

Additional information from study published in New England J. Medicine (Jan. 29, 2020):

https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa2001316