Scientists have discovered that rats, especially in farms in Asia, carry many as yet unknown pathogens that could very quickly be transmitted to humans.
As Humanity fights Covid-19, scientists are already worried about the next pandemic. All attention is currently focused on rats, and in particular farm rats, vectors of many pathogens, some of which are still unknown at present.
New viruses
Those are our colleagues from the Parisian who relayed work by CIRAD which is cause for concern in the current context. On a study conducted over 12 years (from 2006 to 2018) in 3 Asian countries (Laos, Thailand and Cambodia), the scientists studied the viruses present in a sample of 3,248 rats.
The results are cold in the back, because if the researchers found traces of DNA of known viruses (hantaviruses, mammarenaviruses or coronaviruses), they also discovered new viruses which could, in time, be transmitted to it. human.
Wild animals in the sights
If the researchers are concerned by this discovery, it is partly because the capture of wild rats to bring them together in farms is a common practice in Southeast Asia. Rats are particularly appreciated there for their meat and are raised in sometimes questionable sanitary conditions. This weakens their immune system and leaves the door wide open for the virus. Wild rats and farmed rats mix without adequate sanitary measures and all these little people are then handled by humans who do not take special precautions.
Everything you need to promote the development of new viruses that could be the cause of the next pandemic!
History has already shown in 2002 that such a situation is far from unthinkable. The SARS virus then ended up affecting humans through the civet, a small rodent that had itself been infected by a bat. It is also more than likely that SARS-Cov2, the source of the Covid-19 epidemic, has also passed from animals to humans at the Huanan market in Wuhan, China, famous for its sales. live animals.
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