Dr Ariful Islam and wildlife technician Abdul Hai Biswas sampling the Indian flying fox, a bat species that carries the Nipah virus in Bangladesh and India. Photo: Supplied.
Scientists have raised “urgent concerns” over new viruses found in bats in China.
According to an article published today (25 June) in the cross-country peer-reviewed PLOS Pathogens journal, researchers have discovered two new henipaviruses. This is a group of viruses that emerged in the 1990s due to climate change and deforestation, which caused foxes to move into urban areas closer to horses, pigs and humans.
The new henipaviruses are similar to the longstanding Nipah and Hendra viruses, which are spread mainly through fruit bats but can also spread through pigs and other animals.
Such viruses are infectious biological agents that potentially have a high fatality rate by causing severe brain inflammation and respiratory disease in humans.
Charles Sturt University’s Gulbali Institute epidemiologist Dr Ariful Islam said it was “not surprising” to find henipaviruses in bats. Authorities should be focused on what comes next instead, he said.
“It’s highly infectious, and that’s why the WHO [World Health Organization] says Nipah is a pandemic-potential virus,” he said.
“[The researchers] found new henipaviruses. It’s just been detected in bats, but we don’t know the transmission mechanism.
“Question is, ‘Then so what?’ We should have a plan for spillover prevention.”
According to the Wagga-based expert, bats are natural reservoir hosts to other viruses like Coronavirus or Ebola, not just henipaviruses.
Reservoir hosts are organisms (often animals) that carry pathogens such as viruses, bacteria or parasites.
They serve as a source of infection for other organisms without necessarily suffering from the illness, which means it’s a natural “storage” for pathogens.
The recent COVID-19 pandemic, which caused lockdowns and severe travel restrictions across the world in 2020 and 2021, was reportedly derived from a bat-borne virus and most likely was transmitted to humans via another animal in nature.
Dr Islam said there was nothing like that level of threat yet, but we couldn’t be complacent.
“I know this bat species is not available in Australia,” he said.
“The bat species [Indian flying fox (Pteropus medius)] is available in South-East Asia, like Myanmar, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia and China, some of the provinces.”
But he warned that it was “ultimately a global issue”.
The virus is spread through bodily fluids, and initial symptoms include fever and respiratory diseases, with later stages developing into encephalitis, which is the inflammation of the brain, which ultimately leads to death.
For example, a Nipah virus outbreak from infected pigs in Malaysia in 1998 spread to Singapore. Further outbreaks continued in Bangladesh and India.
The henipaviruses’ similarity to the Nipah and Hendra viruses has raised concerns over whether it will spill over to humans and whether there is an urgent need to establish an early warning system like the “One Health” approach. This is “an integrated, unifying approach to tackling health challenges that aims to sustainably balance and optimise the health of people, animals and ecosystems”.
“This is to signify that we need a standard for bat surveillance in Australia,” Dr Islam said.
“We need to set up an early warning system.
“We found the virus, something bad. We need to now [be] aware [of] what we need to do for the spillover period.
“If we do not have One Health surveillance or bat virus surveillance in Australia, how can we set up the early warning system?”
Dr Islam said a catalogue of the bat population in Australia was needed. The next step would be to meet with the Australian Centre for Disease Control (CDC) to discuss how all parties could work together.
Dr Islam said this was also a conservation issue and highlighted the need to find out how to safely coexist with bats.
“We need to protect their habitats,” he said.
“Yes, we are responsible. We are destroying their habitat.”
Currently, not much is known about the novel henipaviruses. Scientists have found them in kidney samples of bats.
Scientists have suggested they are highly infectious, given their genetic similarity to the Nipah and Hendra viruses.
The PLOS Pathogens journal study was a collaboration between the University of Sydney and China’s Yunnan Institute of Endemic Disease Control and Prevention, Dali University, and Sun Yatsen University.
Original Article published by Erin Hee on Region Riverina.
