Anticipating the Species Jump: Surveillance for Emerging Viral Threats

Abstract

Summary Zoonotic disease surveillance is typically triggered after animal pathogens have already infected humans. Are there ways to identify high-risk viruses before they emerge in humans? If so, then how and where can identifications be made and by what methods? These were the fundamental questions driving a workshop to examine the future of predictive surveillance for viruses that might jump from animals to infect humans. Virologists, ecologists and computational biologists from academia, federal government and non-governmental organizations discussed opportunities as well as obstacles to the prediction of species jumps using genetic and ecological data from viruses and their hosts, vectors and reservoirs. This workshop marked an important first step towards envisioning both scientific and organizational frameworks for this future capability. Canine parvoviruses as well as seasonal H3N2 and pandemic H1N1 influenza viruses are discussed as exemplars that suggest what to look for in anticipating species jumps. To answer the question of where to look, prospects for discovering emerging viruses among wildlife, bats, rodents, arthropod vectors and occupationally exposed humans are discussed. Finally, opportunities and obstacles are identified and accompanied by suggestions for how to look for species jumps. Taken together, these findings constitute the beginnings of a conceptual framework for achieving a virus surveillance capability that could predict future species jumps.

Cyprinid herpesvirus 3 and its evolutionary future as a biological control agent for carp in Australia

“…Importantly, representatives of the native Australian taxon most closely-related to common carp (order Siluriformes: salmon catfish, Neoarius graeffei ; eel-tailed catfish, Tandanus tandanus ; [7]) were among those fish analysed. The absence of replication in novel hosts, including the closely related native species, seemingly precludes any transient ‘spill-over’ or sustained cross-species transmission [8] occurring with CyHV-3. Interestingly, although cross-species transmission is central to disease emergence [9], host-jumping to species other than lagomorphs has not occurred with either MYXV or RHDV [10], suggesting that there are important constraints to this process [11].…”

6th International Conference on Emerging Zoonoses

“…Nevertheless, it is increasingly clear that leishmaniasis has a disturbing capacity to jump from species to species, so efforts to control the disease must be given a high priority (Unpublished correspondence with C. Stephens, February 1, 2012; cf. Flanagan et al., 2011).…”

Viral factors in influenza pandemic risk assessment

“…Much of the antigenic variation in swine has a strong relationship to phylogenetic clade (Lewis et al, 2016). Similarly, the high contact rates between humans and dogs, combined with increased circulation of H3N2 canine influenza viruses, may present increasing opportunities for reassortment (Na et al, 2015) and for zoonotic infections (Flanagan et al, 2012). …”