CCoV-HuPn-2018: a new human coronavirus

The new virus made the jump from dogs into human hosts, and it is just next door to Australia.


A new coronavirus, capable of infecting humans, have been discovered in Malaysia. The virus causes respiratory problems, much like COVID-19. Except that it is a whole other virus. Scientists think this one came from dogs.

According to a recent study, the new virus is a canine-feline recombinant alphacoronavirus (genotype II) called CCoV-HuPn-2018, and may represent the eighth coronavirus known to cause disease in people.

Zoonotic diseases occur all the time, this is no news. We have seen previous examples with SARS in 2003, which likely made the jump into human from a civet, or with MERS in 2012, which likely came from camels. H7N7, Ebola, and H1N1 were also viruses that likely made the jump from an animal host into humans.

Now, for the first time, a virus commonly found in dogs has made the jump into humans.

About this new coronavirus
The CCoV-HuPn-2018 coronavirus was first detected in 2017 and 2018 at a hospital in Sarawak, Malaysia. Among 301 patients with apparent pneumonia eight (2.7%) were infected with this new canine coronavirus.

“That’s a pretty high prevalence of a [new] virus,” said Dr Gregory Gray, from the Division of Infectious Diseases, at Duke University School of Medicine in the USA in a news report. “That’s remarkable,” he added.

The findings were later confirmed by an independent virologist, who was also surprised by the finding. “I thought, ‘There’s something wrong’. Canine coronaviruses were not thought to be transmitted to people. It’s never been reported before,” said Dr Anastasia Vlasova, a virologist from Ohio State University, in the USA.

Further analyses on the genome of this new coronavirus identified a unique mutation, never before seen in dog coronaviruses, but found in human coronaviruses. “It’s a mutation that’s very similar to one previously found in the SARS coronavirus and in [versions of] SARS-CoV-2 … [that appeared] very soon after its introduction into the human population,” Vlastova said in the news report.

The mutation might have helped the virus make the jump from dogs into humans. But, so far, there is no evidence that the virus can be transmitted between humans.

Further research is needed to establish if this new coronavirus has the potential to start a new pandemic.