Several media reports on Wednesday raised alarm about a virus called Cat-Que (CQV) and warned that it ‘can trigger a pandemic in India’ , also calling it ‘Chinese virus’ and that the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has warned about the spread of the disease in the country.
All these reports pointed to a paper recently published in the Indian Journal of Medical Research . Proving these media statements wrong, one of the authors of the paper has clarified that the Cat-Que virus is not at all perceived as a major public health threat at the present moment.
“In the past two decades, NIV scientists have collected several samples of human sera and vector species like bats, mosquitoes, ticks, mites, etc. wherein several uncharacterized viruses were detected. Such uncharacterised samples that were stored at NIV can now be studied in detail due to the availability of modern sequencing and virus culture methods,” explains Dr. Pragya D. Yadav from the Maximum Containment Laboratory at Indian Council of Medical Research-National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune, in an email to The Hindu .
“In a similar exercise, the Cat-Que virus was isolated and characterised out of Culex mosquito samples of Karnataka which had been collected more than a decade ago,” she adds.
The CQV was first reported in 2004 when it was isolated from mosquitoes during surveillance in Vietnam and later in Uganda. This virus is known to cause encephalitis-like symptoms similar to Japanese encephalitis, in China. Considering these isolations from neighbouring countries - CQV in Culex mosquitoes in China and in pigs of Vietnam - and assuming the spread of the vector mosquitoes in India, ICMR-NIV made an attempt to develop diagnostic assays for rapid detection of this virus.
In the recently published paper, the team describes in-house diagnostic assays for CQV. Using these assays, they were able to detect the presence of antibodies in archived human serum samples wherein just two of the 833 samples tested positive.
“The entire work is a part of the exploratory research studies which are conducted by NIV as part of their research activity for developing proactive preparedness for new viruses. At the present moment, the Cat-Que virus is not at all perceived as a major public health threat and does not merit enhanced attention. However, if the need arises, ICMR-NIV is well prepared with diagnostic modalities,” adds Dr. Yadav.
