Meet The Virus Hunters: Before The Next Pandemic Strikes | Disease Hunters | Part 1/3

two major cities in china are in lock it down tonight a new type of corona virus whilst in the spread of covet 19. a pandemic erupts and causes havoc worldwide the spotlight is now back on infectious diseases that threaten humanity this series will follow top scientists hunting viruses bacteria and mosquito-borne diseases they're looking for the next killer outbreak before time runs out [Music] [Music] western thailand right on the border with myanmar a disease hunter is doing crucial new research [Music] has spent 20 years studying the world's only flying mammal the bat means [Music] will catch the bats super porn wants to study [Music] as super porn's team sets up a mobile lab pratip's team goes to survey local bat caves [Music] it's an urgent trip and it's not just any bat thereafter they want to find the horseshoe bat linked to an ongoing global pandemic [Music] uh [Music] [Music] marks on the cave walls indicate hundreds perhaps thousands of bats but the team doesn't initially find any horseshoe bats they'll rely on a net covering the cave entrance which the bats will hit when they fly out to feed on insects all they can do now is wait till dark and hope for the best [Music] their patience pays off the small bat with the big reputation finally makes an appearance the horseshoe is one of 150 bat species in thailand the team try to catch as many bats as they can as the clock takes back at the makeshift lab super porn has heard that her precious and potentially dangerous cargo is on the way [Music] foreign that's [Music] the bats are first measured an oral swab captures saliva an anal swab retrieves feces then blood is extracted and a tissue sample will help confirm the species via dna the process goes on late into the night as more bats arrive they include species other than horseshoe bats but they're tested as well [Music] the bats are released and will find their way home it's a lot of activity and attention for someone who didn't originally wanted in bangkok it's the next stage of work for super porn's lab team they've got samples from a hundred bats [Music] they're using a range of tools to analyze the samples including genetic sequencing in early 2020 super porn was the first scientist outside china to confirm a covid19 case just a day after the virus's genetic sequence was released her unit is racing to develop a vaccine like so many others the pandemic has upended her usual research and has meant four hours sleep a night for months on end [Music] foreign the sampling and testing will continue for a few months to detect any covet 19 connection in thai bats [Music] for now super porn is not ready to reveal any results at an isolated animal research center in singapore dr wang linfa is also studying bats up close but with a twist these are cave nectar bats and they're being bred here not studied in the wild this colony is one of the few of its kind anywhere it's backed by the singapore government and duke nus medical school so i think this you know without bragging it makes us one of the really world leaders in bad research every few months the bats are given a health check including for viruses in terms of the number of chronologists that bats carries nobody knows i think that currently we have at least a thousand different chronomats already discovered and then most people thinking what we discover is one percent of what's really in the uh nature yeah so there's many many more [Music] this cave nectar back they can really lick very long tongue and they lick their head and their body and they also have very social animals so they can have urine contamination so from the head we can sample and then this sample goes back to the lab and we can test if they carry antivirus but linfar's team is no longer looking for new viruses they're interested in the relationship between viruses and their hosts they are unlocking the mystery of why bats carry so many viruses without being affected by them and the lessons that could be applied to human health viruses can infect all forms of life they're microscopic fragments of genetic information wrapped in protein and can't multiply without a host so they hijack cells and as they replicate damage the host's dna the normal immune response in humans and other mammals is for special sensors to activate inflammation this sends immune cells to kill the virus and repair the damage but research shows that doesn't happen in bats even with a lot of virus present their inflammation sensors barely activate and then they don't over fight to try to clear the virus but we human and most of the animal we do is when a new virus comes in we fight so we have a cliche you know biologists say very few of us kills us we kill ourselves so we are less likely to co-exist with violence than bats but now we actually found a batsman can teach us lessons you know they have long lifespan less prone to cancer so on bats basically can offer a lot of lessons for students and to translate into medical research but there are still threats that must be studied research shows that in trying to beat the bats immune system some viruses have adapted to spread more quickly among cells that spells trouble when those viruses encounter a weaker immune system like that in humans but bats are not the bad guy they make up a quarter of all mammal species and are essential for pollination and controlling disease-carrying insects like mosquitoes bats have been on earth much much longer than humans so we were the late comers you know they were the natives right so they have been around for at least 65 million years you know it's humans that are causing the spillover of viruses if you go by the last 20 years and you look towards the next 20 years unless we do major changes of how we treat with wildlife how we do farming how we travel how we transport if we don't change then it's almost certain right there will be more outbreaks it's the changing relationship between humans and nature which is seeing many viruses unleashed this is dangerous this is the kind of thing that leaves the bird clue there's more animals for sale now so they're reopening this is uh not good and that's where other disease hunters are focusing their efforts to prevent the next pandemic [Music] in bangkok the link between wildlife and viruses is under the microscope scientists think a bat virus may have jumped to humans at a market in wuhan china by an intermediary animal causing the kovit 19 outbreak is there a similar risk at the famous chatuchak market [Music] steve galster heads the anti-trafficking group freeland which managed to get the animal section here shut down when covid19 broke out for the last almost 30 years my colleagues and i have been uh warning about the potential outbreak of zoonotic diseases pseudonatic outbreaks from uh wildlife trade because all these animals can carry infectious diseases the sellers won't be happy to see steve as he goes deeper into the market a hidden camera is lots needed different species lots of different smells lots of different kinds of birds here poultry you've got some wild ducks you've got some bread ones all mixed together on top of each other pigeons wild turkeys even vultures in here this is dangerous this is the kind of thing that leads to bird flu so here in cages right next to each other we've got uh adult raccoons next to capybara which is from south america north america cages right next to each other this is the biggest rodent in the world and on top of here i think uh these marmosets on top of the pepe barra on the left here we've got some kind of primate hello [Music] but the market is uh market is a little busier than i expected there's more animals for sale now so they're reopening this is uh not good [Music] i think these wildlife markets not just wuhan but across the region really are are ticking time bombs and what we just saw here is it's like a biological warfare lab any one animal can transmit a pathogen to another somebody buys it handles it takes it home as a pet or eats it boom we have another pandemic [Music] back at the office steve's small team is using science to track the trade and disease so we've got uh one of our staff here extracting data from a phone normally we do this with the police the police ask us to do this because we help them with the technology the phone data is analyzed using artificial intelligence to track contacts the algorithms can help identify who's handling finances and even who's the boss it basically allows us to see who's who in the zoo this artificial intelligence basically makes us dangerous toward the traffickers and the team has developed an app that identifies which animals can be traded legally and whether they carry viruses dangerous to humans so the trade on the surface looks like a bunch of normal sometimes low to middle class people just making a buck selling birds lizards or whatever that's not it behind it it's organized crime and corruption freeland wants the wildlife trade banned but it's only part of the virus puzzle [Music] on an early morning in southern cambodia disease hunter vibal hull from the renowned pasta institute is collecting traps his target rodents especially rats [Music] this is brand new research prompted by recent cases of hepatitis e jumping from rats to humans in places like hong kong [Music] it's a sign that scientists always have to be on the lookout for emerging diseases before they can spread vbol's team will also test for arena viruses after a new outbreak of la safiva in africa [Music] so this is a local truck it was v-ball's own childhood struggle with illnesses like malaria that led him into a life of research [Music] um rodents thrive in human environments and when ecosystems are disrupted removing their natural predators near the team's research work are scenes being repeated across southeast asia humans are pushing further into the forest for agriculture housing and roads in return viruses once kept within the canopy are spilling over the who estimates that about 70 percent of all infectious diseases affecting humans come from animals for years the pasta scientists have contributed their findings to special databases a predictive pandemic map updated in 2020 shows hot spots with a greater risk of virus transmission to humans rodents and bats are among the main sources of disease [Music] unlike the animals caught for testing in other research these rodents won't make it out alive everybody on top of the usual sampling the animals are dissected and their organs are harvested to analyze back in the main lab later the same day the team heads out to place more traps a follow-up team will also take samples from the villagers [Music] the first stage of this research is determining the prevalence of viruses in local rats and residents that will lead to action and perhaps anti-viral treatments later [Music] back in phnom penh the samples will undergo intensive testing because this is actually this is from breeding vibol updates his colleague eric carlson on his research it looks like we have a good positive on this one yeah is that right you got a good positive that's really yeah we have a good positive it's quite interesting this is at the market and while we follows up on emerging pathogens eric oversees surveillance of a serious ongoing threat here in southeast asia is a hot spot of avian influenza we have numerous cases and it's been circulating endemically in bird populations for 20 plus years we're still seeing human avian influenza cases in asia we still see new subtypes emerging cases usually increase around festivals when the demand for poultry explodes but bird flu is seen as such a risk that eric's team tests at markets 16 times a year so the reason that we have to to monitor influenza so closely is that it mutates so rapidly now most of the time those mutations aren't going to do much to the virus however sometimes it can change the way it binds to a cell so it can go maybe better into a human sometimes it means it can replicate faster sometimes it means that it can get around antivirals that we have and those are all really major problems the markets themselves pose an additional risk birds are killed on-site before being taken to local restaurants the blood makes these areas what scientists call bio-insecure and increases the chances of a virus infecting workers the more times it jumps into a human the more chance it has to adapt to human physiology to to make it a worse disease in humans and then eventually that's going to possibly become transmissible from human to human and that's when we end up with another pandemic when a virus makes it from a market setting to other parts of our towns and cities the danger grows [Music] transmission can include saliva expelled into the air and a new virus reaches someone else's airways it hits mucous membranes and enters a cell the viruses adaptable to humans have a structure like a protein spike that fits with receptors on the human cell this effectively unlocks the door the cell has mechanisms to reproduce human dna which the virus takes over to make copies of itself the copies leave and infect other cells especially if the immune system doesn't mount an early response in another part of phnom penh epidemiologist arata hidano is testing animals that might pose an even higher pandemic risk than birds he's from the london school of hygiene and tropical disease partnered with singapore's duke nus medical school this is a pig slaughterhouse okay let's take samples errata's team is testing for h1n1 swine flu it's a new project funded by the u.s defense threat reduction agency which normally focuses on weapons of mass destruction that's how seriously experts are taking the pandemic threat of course they are interested in biological weapon but they're also interesting emerging viruses that can threaten public health and also economic of many countries in the world the pork industry is getting bigger and more intensive as the region's human population grows and can afford more animal protein but the way pigs are raised and transported is bringing them in closer contact with each other with other animals and with humans and pigs have a special vulnerability they have receptors in their airways that bind to flu viruses from both birds and humans [Music] and this is concern because when these two different viruses infect one cell at the same time inside the cell they can create new type of virus that have different genetic components from blood and human virus that means we are very susceptible we don't have immunities and that can potentially cause a pandemic it was h1n1 swine flu that caused the spanish flu pandemic of 1918. which killed tens of millions of people that strain faded away but new ones keep emerging [Music] scientists like arata now have a more sophisticated understanding of the viruses transmitted between animals and the ones that might affect us but it's still not enough [Music] we have to remember that there are so many viruses we don't know yet in the world please just start discovering and as we search more we will find more [Music] this trained veterinarian got into epidemiology because he became fascinated by the role humans play in unleashing viruses there's always constant feedback loop between our behaviors and how this is spread and without understanding this system we can't control the disease [Music] and it's partly human behavior that explains why viruses that should have been eliminated by now are still a threat with a painful human [Music] cost in singapore a hospital dating back more than a hundred years is no longer needed and awaits redevelopment it once housed patients stricken with viruses and other diseases that were dreaded worldwide like bubonic plague and smallpox smallpox killed hundreds of millions over the centuries from the late 1960s a concerted effort of tracing and vaccination got underway and smallpox was eradicated by 1980 the hospital also treated victims of polio that crippling virus had its last local case in 1978 experts thought polio would follow smallpox and be eradicated everywhere by the 1990s so what went wrong [Music] in the philippines community nurse claudia domdom is on an urgent mission in a city east of manila she's looking for children who have not been vaccinated against polio she's got one more week to reach 95 of them in a community of 10 000 people [Music] this comes after the country saw its first polio outbreak in almost 20 years [Music] one of the challenges is growing resistance from parents [Music] [Music] was officially eradicated here in 2000 the danger now is vaccine-derived polio the philippines and some other countries use a cheap oral vaccine that contains a weakened but live version of the virus it can mutate and be released back into the environment usually through defecation so it threatens children who aren't immunized to be safe a society needs 95 vaccination for herd immunity the percentage here and elsewhere has been slipping below that target for years wild polio now only exists in pakistan and afghanistan but in 2020 vaccine-derived polio cases were reported in 18 countries it's an insidious and highly contagious disease the virus usually replicates in the intestines but if it gets into the nervous system it damages motor neurons which send messages to muscles they waste away causing paralysis in the limbs cranial nerves can also be paralyzed affecting swallowing and talking and it can affect the lungs making breathing difficult or impossible so claudia pushes on her target is to immunize 1 000 children this week or 200 a day thank you hundreds of kilometers to the south doctors are still finding victims of the new polio outbreak three-year-old al-zamir can no longer walk his 21-year-old father has to look after him all day [Music] foreign [Music] they live with alzamir's grandmother his mother has left [Music] by this swampy impoverished area has typical polio risk factors sanitation is a challenge with a communal toilet alzamir can't even make it that far he defecates on the porch and his father deals with it it's likely al-zamir was infected from local water or surfaces tainted with fecal matter sometimes the family travels more than an hour to go to hospital pediatrician julietta ciapno is overseeing more than half a dozen children with polio they get a checkup and sometimes rehab sessions of course it is very frustrating i feel sad because polio is one of the vaccine preventable diseases there is a possibility that the outbreak will become serious if we will not be able to control it as soon as possible the numbers are still in the hundreds worldwide but the who says if just one child is infected children in all countries are at risk it warns that if polio isn't eradicated there could be up to 200 000 new cases a year within 10 years [Music] for now alzamir faces a lifetime of challenges that could have been avoided [Music] back in san jose del monte a month has passed and claudia is doing vaccinations for other diseases she's been off work because she and her husband contracted covet 19. but her work continues to fight disease and prevent more suffering [Music] experts say richer nations should help developing countries get vaccination rates up and stamp out polio while there's still time [Music] frontline staff like claudia do their best but as with smallpox international cooperation is the only answer and cooperation is also urgent on covid19 which is still spreading here and elsewhere so disease hunters are collaborating worldwide from iceland to singapore they're using the latest technology to hunt and fight the new coronavirus as it spreads and mutates [Music] many countries still have their borders shut tight to visitors but iceland is trying a different approach [Music] new arrivals at reykjavik airport are swabbed for covid19 then go into five days quarantine if they test negative at the end of that period they're free to go but despite the apparent normalcy here disease hunters are hard at work they're tracking covet 19 in real time making iceland a kind of genetic laboratory [Music] a local company with a long history in studying genetics and disease is taking the lead hundreds of thousands of blood samples gathered over the years are kept at a constant minus 24 degrees the company has been sequencing the dna of every icelander now the founder is applying the same approach to covid19 every time you start we started to work on a new disease we had to answer the question what is it that has yet to be understood about this disease and then all of a sudden we have in aleppo disease with all questions unanswered so in many ways that was uh generated a feast for us swabs arrive at decode from the airport and testing centers every hour or so the company is sequencing the genetic code of every positive covid19 case the first step is isolating the viruses rna then other tests are done to confirm the positive case and do the precise genetic sequencing a tourist was weakly positive probably recovered so that's how it looks here that makes sense this virus is a string of almost 30 000 repetitions of the letters a u g and c representing different proteins when cells make copies there are sometimes typos and a mutation occurs when one of the letters changes such as from an a to a g transmission chains d code is taking those mutations and mapping out a kind of growing family tree connecting the infections to each other we could from the very beginning determine the geographic origin of the virus in every single case in iceland so having the sequence of the virus gives you an overview of where the virus is coming from who is in fact in whom determine whether there is a lot of of infected people coming into the country or whether this is simply a community spread [Music] understanding the mutations and path of the virus also helps make decisions much faster than in the past the scientists determined that children were less likely to spread the virus so local schools stayed open the decode scientists are sharing their information with other disease hunters around the world on a database called gizaid it was started for influenza but has taken on an urgent new role [Music] at singapore's a star sebastian marastro checks in on a team processing the incoming gizaid information [Music] how many sequences do we have from iceland have have you seen that we got new new sequences from moldova and montenegro it's where the the very first ones singapore is working with teams in europe and south america to keep the system going 24 hours a day they curate the genetic sequences then upload them so scientists can see how the virus is changing around the world that's okay because we yeah we want the coloring at the branches i'm using computers to hunt viruses or to hunt mutations in viruses and since they move very fast we also need to move fast the area that we are in bioinformatics allows you to make sense out of the sequences relatively quickly in the computer sometimes we get this new sequence in and within minutes we know that's something interesting that something new a-star's powerful server crunches all the terabytes of information with more than 100 000 genetic sequences processed so far this produces detailed databases and 3d models which scientists everywhere can access for free this is the coronaviruses spike the colored dots are mutations you constantly need to keep a lookout because the virus changes often in random positions but if it affects where your detection happens then you need to react to that sometimes drug resistance can occur exactly and you can see that in the 3d structure of the virus where the drug binds and then you have a mutation and then the drug cannot bind anymore this is both for treatment with antibodies as well as for for vaccines that's why it's good and important to have this constant flow of sequences [Music] and the massive flow of data is speeding up vaccine development focusing on precise areas of a virus a leading vaccine approach modifies another virus to mimic the coronavirus's spike the immune system responds in two ways immune cells outside the virus trigger antibodies that bind to the surface other immune cells go inside and respond on a cellular level this process might offer longer lasting immunity and a lot of this is thanks to the work of the disease hunters quickly sharing their data with each other and the world i hope this served as a blueprint for future outbreaks and it can be applied to the new diseases future outbreaks new diseases are they inevitable and what lessons are we learning back in bangkok superporn has not finished analyzing her samples to see if thai bats carry the same virus that caused the original kovid 19 outbreak in china the verdict so far no sign of the virus so danger is averted for now but there's been a wake-up call it seems we need to change how we interact with the natural world and step up scientific surveillance where the city meets the forest in ways we didn't plan for [Music] and our disease hunters will continue their work as the next virus gets ready to spill over they'll do their best to keep humanity safe [Music] you

Channel: CNA Insider

Views: 487,499

Keywords: CNA Insider, Channel NewsAsia, People stories, Asian perspectives, Disease Hunters, COVID-19, coronavirus, pandemic, virus, vaccine, pathogen, disease, scientist, science, research, Thailand, bat, Singapore, immune system, zoonotic, wildlife market, wildlife trade, Cambodia, rodent, Institut Pasteur, bird flu, influenza, H1N1, polio, health, flu, CNA, CNA documentary

Id: 88EMvzqUBso

Length: 47min 35sec (2855 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 04 2020