The first documented victim of the virus was a 52-year-old veterinarian in Beijing, China, Chinese health officials revealed after publishing a report on Saturday.
According to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the victim worked at a research center specializing in primate breeding which carried out the dissection of two monkeys in recent months. One month after the experimentation, the victim died with symptoms such as nausea and vomiting.
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Saliva and blood samples were sent to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention in April, where researchers found the presence of the “Mono B” virus. Both a doctor and a nurse who had had close contact with the victim have tested negative after testing for the virus.
The “Mono B” virus, also called the herpes B virus, is prevalent among macaque monkeys but is very rare, and sometimes fatal when transmitted to humans.
In humans it tends to attack the central nervous system and cause inflammation in the brain, leading to loss of consciousness, explained Kentaro Iwata, an infectious disease expert at Kobe University in Tokyo: “If left untreated, there is a rate of Mortality around 80 percent.
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Fewer than 100 human infections of the virus have been reported since the first case of primate-to-human transmission in 1932, most from North America, where researchers tend to be more aware of the disease, Iwata says.
Both Herpes B and the Coronavirus are the “consequence of species jumping,” said Nikolaus Osterrieder, dean of the Jockey Club University of Veterinary Medicine and Life Sciences in Hong Kong.
“But the important difference is that in the case of herpes B, it’s a dead end. It’s not about jumping from one human being to another,” he added. “SARS-CoV-2, on the other hand, acquired the ability to spread in a new host.”
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there has only been one documented case of human-to-human transmission.
Osterrieder said that even though the virus is very well adapted to macaque monkeys, it is unlikely that it will begin to endow in a certain way to infect humans.
However, both he and Iwata stressed that they hope more people learn about the disease and take proper safety precautions, especially when interacting with monkeys in non-research settings, such as a zoo or in the wild.
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Source: infobae.com