11 On December 31, 2019, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) dispatched a rapid response team to accompany Hubei provincial and Wuhan city health authorities and to conduct an epidemiologic and etiologic investigation. We report the results of this investigation, identifying the source of the pneumonia clusters, and describe a novel coronavirus detected in patients with pneumonia whose specimens were tested by the China CDC at an early stage of the outbreak. We also describe clinical features of the pneumonia in two of these patients.
The study showed that initial propagation of human respiratory secretions onto human airway epithelial cell cultures, followed by transmission electron microscopy and whole genome sequencing of culture supernatant, was successfully used for visualization and detection of new human coronavirus that can possibly elude identification by traditional approaches.
Further development of accurate and rapid methods to identify unknown respiratory pathogens is still needed. On the basis of analysis of three complete genomes obtained in this study, the researchers designed several specific and sensitive assays targeting ORF1ab, N, and E regions of the 2019-nCoV genome to detect viral RNA in clinical specimens. The primer sets and standard operating procedures have been shared with the World Health Organization and are intended for surveillance and detection of 2019-nCoV infection globally and in China.
Additional evidence to confirm the etiologic significance of 2019-nCoV in the Wuhan outbreak include identification of a 2019-nCoV antigen in the lung tissue of patients by immunohistochemical analysis, detection of IgM and IgG antiviral antibodies in the serum samples from a patient at two time points to demonstrate seroconversion, and animal (monkey) experiments to provide evidence of pathogenicity. Of critical importance are epidemiologic investigations to characterize transmission modes, reproduction interval, and clinical spectrum resulting from infection to inform and refine strategies that can prevent, control, and stop the spread of 2019-nCoV.
N Engl J Med 2020; A Novel Coronavirus from Patients with Pneumonia in China, 2019 382:727-733 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2001017
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