Snakes, including Chinese cobras and krait, could be the source of the newly spread coronavirus that 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 a highly venomous species of elapid snake primarily found in central and southern China and Southeast Asia.
The illness was primarily reported in late December 2019 in Wuhan, China, and has been rapidly spreading since then.
Sick travellers 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 virus samples collected from patients, scientists in China have suggested the virus’s genetic code 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 have taken the lives of hundreds of people in the Middle East during the past 17 years.
World Health Organization (WHO) has named the new coronavirus as 2019-nCoV.