Sayak Banerjee, Amity University Kolkata
According to the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH), The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) discovered a deadly virus, named Chapare virus that caused more than five infections near Bolivia’s capital city, La Paz, out of which three are fatal. The researchers attested that the virus can be carried by a species of rodents and spread to humans and animals causing infection.
Caitlin Cossaboom, an epidemiologist with the CDC corroborated that two health care workers along with a patient had caught the virus and died after dealing with some of the infected patients. She confirmed the human-to-human transmission of the virus and that it could be carried by many bodily fluids. Utmost care should be taken by the health care workers or anyone else while dealing with these cases as contact with blood, urine, saliva and semen contamination might transmit the virus.
Chapare virus falls under the arenavirus family and can cause hemorrhagic fevers similar to Ebola disease. Besides fever the other significant symptoms could be vomiting, abdominal pain, skin rash, bleeding gums and pain behind the eyes. Cossaboom confirmed that rodents are the ultimate source of these viruses. After isolating the genome sequence of the RNA in rodent specimens which were similar to that in the infected humans, pigmy rice rat and the small-eared pigmy rice rat, found across Bolivia and several neighbouring countries, were tested positive for the viral RNA. Although this does not prove that the rodents were infectious, it provides a major indication.
Similar to the diagnosis for COVID-19, the CDC experts developed RT-PCR test for detecting Chapare. They were able to distinguish the virus as Chapare because its matched sequence data obtained from the patient involved in the 2004 infection.
There are many things yet to be resolved, especially its origin, how it infects human and whether such huge outbreaks in Bolivia are elsewhere in South America. Scientists believe that Chapare virus might have been circulating in Bolivia for some years, but inaccurate treatment has been administered to the infected patients, stating it as suffering from dengue, which has similar symptoms and is usual in that region.
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