Virologist: We’ve learned about Covid-19 more quickly than any new disease in the past

Scientists have been obsessed with researching coronaviruses for decades

There is dire need to understand the virus behind Covid-19 to find ways to stop it through tracking virus spread, treating infections and developing a safe and effective vaccine.

Since December 2019 scientists across the world have been racing to learn as much as possible about SARS-CoV-2, which is the cause of Covid-19 disease, helping make excellent progress that is helping to tackle this pandemic by avoiding potentially devastating mistakes in our response.

We are learning more about this infection than any other emerging disease before in the past (such as Sars and the H1N1 influenza (swine flu) pandemic in 2009/2010) due to recent advances in technology and rapid scientific communication, but also thanks to the dedicated efforts of coronavirus researchers over the last few decades, before Sars, Mers and Covid-19 were discovered. Here are a few of the major things we have learned in the last four months.

We can track who gave it to who

Tracing the spread of any infection is a critical tool in making evidence-based interventions and policies to control an outbreak. Sequencing the genome of viruses is the best way to track transmission across countries and the world, with researchers using patterns of shared viral mutations to decipher who infected whom. Genome sequencing technology has advanced incredibly over the last ten years becoming faster, cheaper and easier.

One of the first things that was uncovered early in the outbreak by scientists in China was the complete genome sequence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus from some of the earliest cases, which was actually the first indication that the outbreak was caused by a previously-unknown virus.

The public release of this sequence allowed the rapid development of diagnostic tests in other regions, like Europe and Asia allowing the world to find and contain new cases. Since early 2019, nearly 500 SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences exist from over 30 countries.

Researchers in the USA have even used genome sequencing to uncover the covert undetected spread of SARS-CoV-2 across the state of Washington since January 2020, which has informed local public health policy.

Clinical trials are underway

Luckily, SARS-CoV-2 is not the first coronavirus we know about and scientists have been obsessed with these kinds of viruses for decades. One intriguing coronavirus is murine hepatitis virus, an infection that causes liver swelling in lab mice. With the realisation that coronaviruses impose a health burden on humans by way of the common cold, but also with the emergence of Sars and Mers, murine hepatitis virus experts turned their attentions to developing drugs and medicines to target human coronaviruses, using this rodent pathogen as a model system. This work over decades discovered small molecules that could disrupt the normal growth of many coronaviruses, including human ones like Sars and Mers.

Although too late for the SARS epidemic in 2002, one of these drugs, known as Remdesivir, has now been tested experimentally in animal models of severe human coronavirus disease where it helps cure the infection. Remdesivir has even been used in Covid-19 patients. Clinical trials to investigate the safety and efficacy of Remdesivir are under way in China and the USA but look promising.

Research for a coronavirus vaccine was already taking place

The greatest way to truly control an infection is through vaccination, which are safe and effective. Vaccines have already led to the eradication of human and animal diseases like smallpox and cattle rinderpest infections and are on their way to wiping other diseases off the planet, such as measles, rubella and polio. Having a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 would undoubtedly help save countless lives from fatal Covid-19 disease. However, there has never been a human coronavirus vaccine developed and we don’t really know if it even possible (although animal coronavirus vaccines exist and do work so there is hope).

Since late 2019 there has been incredible progress on developing a vaccine against the new coronavirus and scientists right across the world, supported by international funders and pharmaceutical companies, have come up with their best candidate vaccines to begin the long development and clinical trial process to ensure safety and efficacy. Some of these vaccine platforms were already being applied to the related coronavirus Mers, making it more straightforward to swap in SARS-CoV-2.

Researchers across the world continue to make great progress in understanding this novel coronavirus, avoiding potential fatal missteps in our response.

In saying this, it has only been four months and with viruses, the devil truly is in the detail, and we still have very much to learn. Scientists will be of course be building upon the aforementioned advances in genome sequencing, treatments and vaccines to control the pandemic in safe and effective manner but there are also critical questions remaining: where did the virus come from and can we stop it – or similar viruses – from emerging in the future? Where is this virus going? And will it become endemic in the human population, with smaller outbreaks happening yearly?

Connor Bamford is a research fellow in antiviral immunity in the lung at the Wellcome-Wolfson Institute for Experimental Medicine Queen’s University Belfast