The China Bug: Why have majority of deadly influenza viruses in the last two centuries originated in country?
The world is witnessing an outbreak of a new and deadly strain of coronavirus, termed as “2019-nCoV," with nearly a 500 percent jump in the number of deaths from 26 on Friday, January 25, to 131 as of January 29. The number of confirmed infected cases has also seen a sharp increase from 1287 to nearly 6,000 in China alone in mere five days. As concerns about this novel coronavirus grow with major continents across the world reporting multiple confirmed cases, there is intense scrutiny on the origin of such highly-infectious viruses.
Months before the new coronavirus scare, Dennis Carroll, the director of Emerging Threats Unit, US Agency of International Development had speculated about China being the potential source of another influenza virus-associated pandemic.
"We cannot predict where the next influenza pandemic is going to come from. There are certain places you want to pay particular attention to, and China is one of those," Carroll said in the recently released Netflix documentary 'Pandemic.'
"It is the place where we have virtually seen the emergence of virtually all of the deadly influenza viruses for the last half-century," he added.
Carroll's statement in the film was taken in 2019, and months later we are in the midst of a virus outbreak, which could soon swell into a pandemic.
There are records of multiple pandemics having originated in China, dating from the18th century, including the one during 1781-82, which resulted in nearly 75 percent of the British population at the time being infected as it spread across continents. The 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, the spread of H1N1, which infected nearly one-quarter of the world's population and resulted in the deaths of 100 million people, was also found to have originated in China.
The Asian flu, also called the H2N2, which struck in 1957 and lasted for a year, claimed nearly 1 to 2 million lives and originated in China. Years later, the next pandemic called the Hong Kong flu struck in 1968 and lasted till 1970, claiming 500,000 to 2 million lives — 33,800 people were killed in the US. Its origins were also ultimately found in China. The origins of pandemics in the 20th century like the Avian flu (2013), SARS (2002), and now the new coronavirus, 2019-nCoV, have all been traced back to China.
Why is it that the new strains of influenza virus often originate in China? Experts explain that the concentration of livestock like ducks, pigs, chicken, and humans in close proximity in rural China is the highest in the world, leading to animal to human transmission of the mutated virus.
"Virus go from loglife into livestock into people,"Carroll explains in 'Pandemic'. "As the human population grows, we see an increased appetite for protein. As a response, we are raising livestock at unprecedented levels. The problem with that is that the sheer number of animal in a confined space elevates the risk for a virus to spread at a rapid pace."
With the new coronavirus spreading at an alarming rate, and scientists struggling to formulate a vaccine to fight the transmission, it remains to be seen whether this novel strain will soon turn into a pandemic.