15 February 2020 | New Scientist | 9The Pasteur Institute
in Dakar, Senegal,
is studying the virusAS PEOPLE start to pick up the
coronavirus in countries other
than China, fears are rising that
it could explode somewhere
less able to contain it. African
countries, many of which have
strong trade links with China but
limited healthcare infrastructures,
are of particular concern.
As of 11 February, no case had yet
been diagnosed in Africa, but the
continent is bracing for its arrival.
A recent African Union workshop
in Dakar, Senegal, trained lab
technicians from 15 countries in
how to test for the virus. Last week,
only two public health labs on
the continent, in Senegal and
South Africa, could test for the
coronavirus. By the end of this
week, 29 countries will be able to.
“A month ago, I wouldn’t
have said this, but now I think
we will be able to catch cases,”
says John Nkengasong, head of
the Africa Centres for Disease
Control and Prevention in Addis
Ababa, Ethiopia.
But if cases escape detection,
poverty, social instability and
weak healthcare systems in
some countries could lead to
an epidemic with a potentially
global impact. “If we get a massive
wave of infection, we can’t control
it,” says Nkengasong.
Expanded testing capability
will help, as will existing medical
surveillance networks. Although
the Democratic Republic of the
Congo’s Ebola epidemic that
began in 2018 is ongoing, the
outbreak has been contained
within the country’s borders.“Ebola has put those networks
on high alert,” says Nkengasong.
“We’re building on that.”
More than 2600 flights a year
run between China and the
continent, but this isn’t especially
high. Using flight data and
computer models, Alessandro
Vespignani of Northeastern
University in Boston calculates
that the 25 countries at highest risk
of importing a case of coronavirus
are mostly in Asia, followed by
North America and Europe.
Andrew Tatem and his
colleagues at the University ofSouthampton, UK, have calculated
that London has a 10 times higher
risk – and Tokyo a 60 times higher
risk – of getting a case than Nairobi
or Johannesburg.
But if the risk of importing
the virus is relatively low, says
Vittoria Colizza of Sorbonne
University in Paris, France, the
problem is what happens once
a case arrives. That person and
their contacts must be found
and quarantined, and that
is difficult in places where health
infrastructure, and sometimes
public trust, are limited.
Using air travel data and
official assessments of countries’
response capabilities, Colizza
identifies Nigeria, Ethiopia,
Sudan, Angola, Tanzania, Ghana
and Kenya as Africa’s most
at-risk countries.
Some of these countries are
already stretched due to other
infections, including malaria
and Rift Valley fever. “We are
fighting six epidemics now,”
a representative of Sudan told
the World Health Organization
in Geneva last week. “We don’t
need another one.” ❚Testing in Africa
Debora MacKenzie
SEYLLOU/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGESVirology
Wuhan-like virus
discovered seven
years ago
THE Covid-19 coronavirus is similar
to one detected in bats in China in
- But a failure to act on the
warnings of those who studied it
means we missed an opportunity
to protect human health.
While some are now saying the
Covid-19 virus passed to humans
from pangolins, it is likely that
pangolins are merely victims of the
infection, like us. “From the virology
evidence available to date, the virus
is almost certainly from a species
of bat,” says Andrew Cunningham
of the Zoological Society of London.
For years, Zheng-Li Shi and her
colleagues at the Wuhan Institute
of Virology have been isolating
coronaviruses from horseshoe bats
in caves in China’s Yunnan province.
In 2013, they found a coronavirus
that could infect human cells in the
lab. Last week, Shi reported that
this virus is 96 per cent identical
to the Covid-19 virus now
spreading in people.
In 2016, Wayne Marasco at
Harvard Medical School and his
colleagues found that the virusdiscovered by Shi’s team could
replicate in human airway cells.
They described it as being “poised
for human emergence”. However,
they say further research on this
virus was hampered by the US
government’s ban on work that
alters viruses in ways that might
make them more dangerous.
Shi’s work has also revealed that
viruses can pass directly from bats
to people living near their caves.Her findings suggest we didn’t need
pangolins to catch the Covid-
virus, just as she previously revealed
that SARS can come directly from
bats without first infecting civets.
Last year, Shi warned that it
was highly likely coronavirus
outbreaks would originate in bats
in China. “The investigation of bat
coronaviruses becomes an urgent
issue for the detection of early
warning signs,” she wrote.
Now this opportunity has been
missed, Shi has made a plea for
increased efforts to develop drugs
and vaccines. ❚
Debora MacKenzieAfrican nations step up efforts
to prevent spread of coronavirus
96%
The similarity between Covid-
virus and a virus found in 2013