HABRI Central

Human coronaviruses (HCoVs) often have animal origins and then adapt to humans by jumping directly or via an intermediate host. The emergence of SARS-CoV in 2003, MERS-CoV in 2012, and SARS-CoV-2 in late-2019, confirms that coronaviruses can cause severe-to-fatal disease and that bats are probably the source of these viruses, highlighting the role of animals as reservoirs.

In 2017–18, a closely related, but distinct, canine coronavirus (CCoV) was identified for the first time in the nasopharyngeal swabs of children with pneumonia in Malaysia. The virus, CCoV-HuPn-2018, cultivated in the canine A72 cell line, was characterised as a novel canine-feline-like recombinant virus with a very unique deletion in the nucleoprotein. This feature was similar to the deletion found in SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 that occurred very soon after introduction in humans, suggesting the zoonotic origin of CCoV-HuPn-2018. Analysis of the virus's genes highlights that CCoV-HuPn-2018 could have infected cats and pigs at one point, but it probably jumped directly from dogs into people, as the majority of the genome was the same as the CCoV strains, TN-449 and HLJ-073.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

1. Animal welfare
2. Health
3. One Health
4. open access
5. Virus diseases
6. Zoonoses