Nuclear-derived tools supplied to countries worldwide by the IAEA in partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) play a critical role in researching, detecting, diagnosing and characterizing zoonotic diseases such as COVID-19. They are also important to understand and track changes in a virus. In recent discoveries in the Netherlands and Denmark, COVID-19 infections have been, for the first time, recorded to transmit from humans to mink and back to humans, showing that the virus quickly adapts to new hosts. Understanding such mutations is vital in the development of an effective vaccine against the virus causing COVID-19 and other similar viruses.
The IAEA and FAO have established a platform that promotes and facilitates the access to DNA sequencing technology to laboratories worldwide to enable in-depth understanding of locally circulating or introduced pathogens. To date, the IAEA has over 3000 submissions by counterpart laboratories and 24 publications using the DNA sequencing service of various viruses, including coronaviruses, in peer reviewed journals.
“The recent discovery in Danish mink farms highlights the need for constant monitoring and surveillance at the animal-human interface and the necessity for scientists and laboratories around the world to have available appropriate diagnostic and surveillance tools to be applied for early and rapid detection and characterization of pathogens, monitoring their evolution and mining new pathogens as soon as they evolve and emerge,” said Gerrit Viljoen, Head of the Animal Production and Health Section of the Joint FAO/IAEA Programme for Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture.
If the virus changes its structure while adapting to multiple hosts, it can become highly pathogenic and more fatal to people once it comes back to humans.
