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SNAKE FLU? Deadly Chinese Virus May Be Linked To Snakes

   DailyWire.com
Close-Up Of Snake On Field - stock photo
Somsak Bumroongwong / EyeEm via Getty Images

The deadly coronavirus bringing back fears of SARS to China may have originated with native snakes.

CNN reported that the Chinese krait and the Chinese cobra have been linked to the virus, which has killed at least six people so far this winter.

“Using samples of the virus isolated from patients, scientists in China have determined the genetic code of the virus and used microscopes to photograph it. The pathogen responsible for this pandemic is a new coronavirus. It’s in the same family of viruses as the well-known severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), which have killed hundreds of people in the past 17 years. The World Health Organization (WHO) has named the new coronavirus 2019-nCoV,” the outlet reported.

The outlet went on to report that both SARS and MERS are “zoonotic viral diseases, meaning the first patients who were infected acquired these viruses directly from animals.”

“This was possible because while in the animal host, the virus had acquired a series of genetic mutations that allowed it to infect and multiply inside humans,” the outlet continued.

Once transmitted to humans from animals, the virus can then be transmitted to other humans, creating the spread of the disease we see in China now. As The Daily Wire previously reported, the latest version of the coronavirus has killed at least six people, with China confirming more than 300 cases earlier this week, a day-over-day jump since Sunday.

The Wall Street Journal reported that it has “spread quickly around the country and across Asia, infecting 156 new patients in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and other densely-populated cities, and reaching South Korea for the first time—a major escalation in the pneumonia-like disease’s transmission.”

CNN previously reported: “Tour agencies have been banned from taking groups out of Wuhan and the number of thermal monitors and screening areas in public spaces will be increased. Traffic police will also conduct spot checks on private vehicles coming in and out of the city to look for live poultry or wild animals, after the virus was linked to a seafood and live animal market, according to a report by state media outlet the People’s Daily, citing Wuhan’s Municipal Health Commission.”

The outlet more recently reported that the virus may have transmitted from snakes to humans, but that bats may have been the actual originators:

The researchers used an analysis of the protein codes favored by the new coronavirus and compared it to the protein codes from coronaviruses found in different animal hosts, like birds, snakes, marmots, hedgehogs, manis, bats and humans. Surprisingly, they found that the protein codes in the 2019-nCoV are most similar to those used in snakes.

Snakes often hunt for bats in wild. Reports indicate that snakes were sold in the local seafood market in Wuhan, raising the possibility that the 2019-nCoV might have jumped from the host species — bats — to snakes and then to humans at the beginning of this coronavirus outbreak. However, how the virus could adapt to both the cold-blooded and warm-blooded hosts remains a mystery.

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