First reported in 2009 in Central China and since then the country has isolated the pathogen in the year 2011, SFTS is not a new disease.
Amid 19 million people across the world being infected and 711,271 killed by the coronavirus pandemic, China has reported a new infectious disease caused by a tick-borne virus. As the toll of the highly infectious coronavirus continues to increase with every passing day across the world and the whole world struggles to live with the new normal in the face of the pandemic that began in China’s Wuhan, the tick-borne virus has already infected close to 67 people and killed at least 7.
As scientists and medical experts believe that the infection has been transmitted from ticks to humans, authorities have already warned people of possible human-to-human transmission of the disease.
Identified as ‘Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome’ or SFTS virus for short, the virus can be transmitted through tick bites. East China’s Jiangsu Province had already reported more than 37 cases in the first half of the year and 23 more people were found to have contracted the disease later in East China’s Anhui Province, according to the Chinese daily the leading Chinese daily ‘Global Times’.
First reported in 2009 in Central China and since then the country has isolated the pathogen in the year 2011, SFTS is not a new disease. Belonging to a family of arthopod-borne and rodent-borne viruses, the pathogen of the virus is classified in the Bunyavirus category.
As per the reports by Chinese daily, fever and coughing are the symptoms of the virus. Some of the other symptoms of tick-borne illness may include headache, fatigue, and muscle ache.
A doctor from the first affiliated hospital under Zhejiang University, Sheng Jifang, said that the possibility of human-to-human transmission could not be excluded; patients can pass the virus to others via blood or mucous.
As per agency reports, doctors warned that tick bites are the major transmission route. Although, they stressed that as long as people remain cautious, there’s no need to over panic over such virus contagion.
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