COWS ALSO HAVE CORONAVIRUSES
Can cows act as transmitters to humans of some kind of coronavirus? The answer is yes" There are seven known types of coronaviruses that can infect us, called HCovs. C uatro of them often causes the common cold and can be potentially more severe in immunocompromised persons. Some are better known than others. Its effects can end up causing more serious diseases such as the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), acute and severe respiratory syndrome (SARS), and COVID-19, which still have us in quarantine. But where did they come from? For two of these viruses, there is strong evidence to suggest an origin in the main livestock species. In the 1960s, British researcher June Almeida (the first scientist in history to identify the coronavirus ) detected HCoV-OC43 that did not jump from a bat, it came from cows. A group of Dutch scientists obtained the complete sequence of their genome in 2005; When compared to other coronaviruses, they found that it had a 99.6 percent genetic similarity to a bovine coronavirus, BCoV. The transfer to humans can have arisen in the context of a pandemic registered at the end of the nineteenth century. It was a pandemic that affected livestock and caused many cows to be slaughtered. Possibly at that time the transfer to humans occurred. Bovine coronavirus (BCoV) is recognized as an important pathogen of cattle. Another of the endemic coronaviruses, that is, with which we live together, HCoV-229E can be transferred from camels and dromedaries as it is with the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS). This graphic from a study published in 2018 gives a schematic overview of the groups of animals that may have played a role in the evolution and emergence of various coronaviruses that have reached humans.
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