One Health Movement News / One Health Topics 'in' the News

Researchers of coronaviruses discovered that camels are the source of one of the four common cold coronaviruses, "HCoV-229E­."Camels were already known to be the source of the severe and often fatal Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronavirus. Previous MERS studies led to the link between camels and HCoV-229E.

A black, cloud-like mass billows from a cave on a mountainside in Tao Pun, Thailand. The dark shape rises skyward, shifts, and pivots as the sun sets behind the golden spires of a nearby Buddhist monastery and the green rice fields of western Thailand.

It's not smoke emerging from the cave, but Thailand's largest bat colony, embarking on its nightly search for a tasty meal of insects. And just below the mouth of the cave is a team of Thai scientists, waiting to catch some of the bats as they depart.

Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), which has sickened at least 495 people, killed 141, and now popped up in the United States, has much in common with other recent outbreaks, including SARS, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which killed some 775 patients in 2002 and 2003: They can spread rapidly across borders, stir up fear in the public, and be transmitted from human to human.

Link to Full Article by Dr. Laura H. Kahn