If surveillance and diagnostics continue to lag, influenza D virus and canine coronavirus have real potential to trigger outbreaks, a team of infectious disease experts and authors write in an article in the January issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases, a journal of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Our review of the literature indicates these two viruses pose respiratory disease threats to humans, yet little has been done to respond to or prevent infection from these viruses,” said co-author John Lednicky, Ph.D., a research professor in the Department of Environmental and Global Health at the University of Florida’s College of Public Health and Health Professions.

Read more about Scientists Say These Two Viruses May Become the Next Public Health Threats.

John Lednicky, Ph.D., Pepper’s owner and a University of Florida College of Public Health and Health Professions virologist, took Pepper’s catch — a dead Everglades short-tailed shrew — into the lab for testing as part of his ongoing work to understand transmission of the mule deerpox virus.

Testing revealed the shrew had a previously unidentified strain of orthoreovirus. Viruses in this genus are known to infect humans, white-tailed deer, bats and other mammals. While orthoreoviruses’ effects on humans are not yet well understood, there have been rare reports of the virus being associated with cases of encephalitis, meningitis and gastroenteritis in children.

There wasn’t anything particularly unusual about Pepper’s behavior; he’s a skilled hunter who regularly leaves “gifts” for his humans. But Pepper’s owner had a different response than most of us. He’s John Lednicky, Ph.D., an expert in viruses and their transmission, including across species. Suspecting that mice may carry mule deerpox, Lednicky scooped up Pepper’s trophy and took it to his University of Florida lab for testing.

A subtype of avian influenza known as H5N1 has quickly spread worldwide, impacting hundreds of bird species and nearly 50 species of mammals, including humans – often lethally. About 50% of the people with a confirmed H5N1 infection have died from the virus. It is also highly pathogenic to poultry, decimating flocks within hours.  

H5N1 is now rippling through the U.S. agricultural industry, infecting dairy cows, chickens, and the people who work with them. H5N1 has been identified in nearly 200 dairy herds in 13 states since March, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We are uniquely equipped to deal with emerging pathogens like H5N1,” said EPI Director J. Glenn Morris, Jr., M.D. “With faculty from across the UF campus, we can quickly assemble a robust multidisciplinary team and connect with experts at the state level, as well as Florida farmers through UF/IFAS Extension. This allows us to get to the heart of a problem and address it from multiple angles.” 

Led by Dr. Z. Hugh Fan, Ph.D., professor at the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and Dr. John Lednicky, Research Professor at the College of Public Health and Health Professions’ Department of Environmental and Global Health, an interdisciplinary team at the University of Florida has developed a game-changing diagnostic test for SARS-CoV-2 that is fast, reliable, low-cost and capable of differentiating between COVID-19 and influenza.

The infections occurred between 2014 and 2015 and no known transmission to other people occurred. But the discovery marks the first time that any coronavirus strain from the subgroup that commonly infects pigs, known as deltacoronaviruses, has been found in humans. It also adds to growing evidence that coronaviruses common to animals may switch hosts and “spill over” into people more frequently than once thought.

The findings were published November 17, 2021, in Nature.

The good news is that most spillover infections are not serious and rarely lead to person-to-person transmission, says UF Emerging Pathogens Institute Director J. Glenn Morris Jr., M.D., M.P.H. & T.M., who is also the study’s senior author.

“What we’ve shown is that there is likely some movement back and forth with coronaviruses between animals and people,” Morris said. “It’s simply not detected most of the time because we don’t look for it.”

The study’s first author, John Lednicky, Ph.D., a research professor in the department of environmental and global health in the UF College of Public Health and Health Professions, said the research team thought outside the box to overcome the challenge of testing for an unknown virus.

 “Traditional PCR technology is guided by a dogmatic view that ‘if you look, you find,’” Lednicky said. “But we merged classic virology with molecular approaches. My laboratory does this frequently, and we continually find viruses that are overlooked by standard tests.”

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What’s more, they report that the virus seems similar to one that infected several children in Malaysia between 2017 and 2018. This coronavirus had not been previously found in humans.

“It’s fundamentally curious,” said Rhoel Dinglasan, Ph.D., M.P.H., a professor of infectious diseases with the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine, part of UF Health, the university’s academic health center. “It seems like COVID-19 is not affecting people in Africa as severely as it has in North America. But why?”

Dinglasan suspects the answer is connected to people’s exposure to various infectious diseases in specific geographic regions.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently awarded a $10 million grant to a team led by Dinglasan to test this hypothesis and explore other factors that can influence COVID-19 severity. Other investigators from UF include John Lednicky, Ph.D., a professor in the College of Public Health and Health Professions; Piyush Jain, Ph.D., an assistant professor of chemical engineering in the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering; and Sadie Ryan, Ph.D., an associate professor of medical geography in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

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CBS News reports the boy was taken to the hospital last week in the southern Kerala state with a high-grade fever and suspected brain inflammation. After blood tests, he was diagnosed with the Nipah virus and died Sunday.

Officials are using contact tracing, quarantine and hospitalization on the 188 people who have come into contact with the preteen to prevent a widespread outbreak, CBS reported. 

“This is one of those viruses we really need to pay attention to,” John Lednicky, a research professor at the University of Florida‘s Environmental and Global Health Department, told USA TODAY.