New research: Street dogs may have spread the new corona virus

Analysis of sars-cov-2 shows that it is not the ant cones that have spread the new corona virus to humans, as previously thought.

Scientists have calculated the mutation rate of the virus and found that the closest relative to sars-cov-2 and the anthrax coronavirus coexisted in 1882, which is far too remote for the anthrax to have been able to infect humans today.

Now the suspicion is directed at street dogs who have eaten bats. This is shown by molecular biologist Xuhua Xia at the University of Ottawa, Canada, in a new study presented in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.

"This is a very exciting study, Xuhua Xia logically describes how the intestines of dogs can have been like a training camp for the virus," says Björn Olsen, professor of infectious diseases at Uppsala University.

The sars-cov-2 virus can provide clues to the animal in which it was developed. Xuhua Xia has compared the virus's structure with the immune system of dogs and found evidence that the virus may well have thrived in the intestines of dogs.

The dogs do not need to be particularly ill. The virus has had plenty of time to mutate in the intestines and develop into a human-dangerous virus.

Bats eat bats in some parts of China. One conceivable scenario is therefore that street dogs have eaten leftovers from human bats. This way, the virus gets into the dog's intestinal system.

- Dogs have a habit of licking themselves in the buttocks, or smelling others in the buttocks. They then get the virus into the respiratory tract. Then maybe they lick dogs that are pets, which then in turn lick people in the face, says Björn Olsen.

The virus migrates from the intestines of dogs to then enter human airways and makes us sick.

Björn Olsen now believes that the next step is to take stool samples from street dogs in Wuhan to prove that the dogs are indeed carriers of the virus.