Snakes, including Chinese Cobra and krait, could be the original source of the newly spread coronavirus that has sparked an outbreak of a lethal infectious respiratory illness in China this winter.
The many-branded krait – the Taiwanese krait or the Chinese krait – is an extremely venomous species of elapid snake mostly found in central and southern China and Southeast Asia.
The illness was primarily reported during late December 2019 in Wuhan, China, and has been rapidly spreading since then.
Sick travelers from the city of Wuhan caused the transmission of infection to other people in China as well as other countries, including the United States.
While using samples of the virus collected from patients, scientists in China have suggested the genetic code of the virus and deployed microscopes to photograph it. The pathogen leading to this pandemic is a new coronavirus. It’s from the same family of viruses as the already reported severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and coronavirus (MERS-CoV), which had taken lives of hundreds of people in the Middle East during past 17 years.
World Health Organization (WHO) has named new coronavirus as 2019-nCoV.
