[ad_1]
This means that we have to somehow mitigate the threat posed by the fallout. The problem is complex, and while scientists tend to agree unanimously that governments should devote more resources to managing this particular risk, views differ as to the precise strategy required. . According to Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota, we should focus on monitoring Covid-19 infections in pets and pets, as these creatures are in constant contact with humans, and therefore the likelihood of two-way transmissions is much higher.
“At this point, I think it’s the animal species that are of most concern,” he says. “The potential for contact and modification of the virus, which would then be transmitted back to humans, is greater. “
In the United States, government organizations have already launched initiatives that attempt to tackle this problem. The United States Department of Agriculture’s Animal, Plant, and Health Inspection Service (APHIS) leads domestic animal and wildlife surveillance efforts. The agency closely monitors farmed mink and other species that live near humans. This includes fox squirrels, raccoons, deer mice, white-tailed deer and rabbits, some of which have already shown the ability to spread the virus within their species in the lab.
Since the start of the pandemic, a number of research teams around the world have studied domestic animals such as cats, dogs and hamsters to assess the prevalence of Covid-19. Virologist Kaitlin Sawatzki is working on one of these projects at Tufts University in Massachusetts. “So far, we’ve tested 2,455 different animals since March 2020,” she says.
About five percent of Sawatzki’s animals have tested positive for Covid-19 – a figure she says is comparable to results elsewhere in the world. However, while this work is important, she believes that monitoring wildlife populations is much more important in terms of preventing problematic spillover events, noting that if pets or farm animals are infected, it is relatively simple to prevent the continued transmission of a mutated virus. .
“I’m not very worried that pets are causing an ongoing pandemic because they tend to stay at home,” she says. “My biggest concern is that if Sars-CoV-2 is able to spread into wildlife and then continue transmission within that species, then this is something we cannot control in the same way as your domestic dogs. “
As a result, Sawatzki is leading a separate initiative, working with 22 wildlife rehabilitation centers across the United States, which take in injured animals and then release them back into the wild. So far, they have screened 673 wild animals, to see if facility workers have infected them with Covid-19. “All have been negative so far, but if we find any positive tests, we will immediately report them to state and federal authorities,” she said.
Finding the wild animals most at risk of contracting Covid-19 and transmitting variants of them to humans may sound like hunting a proverbial needle in a haystack, but sophisticated artificial intelligence tools are already providing scientists like Fagre and Sawatzki for vital assistance. Earlier this year, Barbara Han, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in New York City, created a computer model which predicted the likelihood that different species could harbor Sars-CoV-2 and transmit it effectively between them. While ACE2 – the receptor the virus uses to enter our cells – is found throughout the animal kingdom, it binds to this receptor more strongly in some animals than in others.
“In order for the host to be infected and then able to transmit it, the virus has to enter the cell, replicate, and then all of the new viruses leave the cell,” Han explains. “But none of this will happen if there isn’t a strong bond, which depends on the structure of ACE2, which varies from species to species. So we created this model where we calculated the strength of a bond that we expected to produce, based on what ACE2 looks like in all these different species. This allowed us to predict whether they are likely to produce an infection that could ultimately have consequences for humans. “
.
[ad_2]
Pictures Credit