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WARNING: Lethal First-of-Its-Kind Virus Is Now In The U.S.

It's called the Camp Virus, and it's never been in North America, ever, until now. It's part of the lethal Henipaviruses and was just discovered in the United States.

According to the Live Science website, it's a pathogen that was found in some short-tailed shrews in Alabama. A shrew is a tiny rodent that looks like a long mouse with a pointy snout with buck teeth.

Camp Hill virus is a type of henipavirus, a broad group of viruses that typically infect bats but have been known to "spill over" into various mammals, including humans. In people, henipaviruses can cause severe respiratory illness and a type of inflammation of the brain known as encephalitis.

At the moment, it appears that humans can only contract the Camp Virus through direct contact with animals that have it. That said, according to Live Science, it is related to two deadly viruses that have an average fatality rate of more than 50% in humans.

On a white background, three test tubes with the very widespread New Virus called the Nipah Virus are shown.

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 These two viruses are the Hendra and the Nipah which have yet to ever hit America.

[Hendra virus] was first detected in Australia in 1994 and has a case-fatality rate of around 60%. [Nipah virus] has caused disease outbreaks across Southeast Asia since being initially detected in Malaysia in 1998, and it kills between 40% and 70% of people infected.

According to the CDC, this alarming discovery is now listed as an Emerging Infectious Disease in the United States, raising concerns that it may be more widespread.

Henipaviruses can cross species barriers, infecting various mammals, including humans; they often cause severe respiratory illness and encephalitis and are associated with high case fatality rates.The 2 most notable henipaviruses are Hendra virus and Nipah virus.

The good news is that there haven't been any reported cases in humans yet while research continues. So far, Alabama is the only place it's been discovered, although short-tailed shrews can be found across North America.

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Nipah Virus

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NIH Starts Trial Of Moderna's MRNA Nipah Virus Vaccine

Researchers in the US have started a clinical trial of a vaccine against Nipah virus, a serious infection caught from animals that has a fatality rate of between 40% and 70%, developed by mRNA specialist Moderna.

Nipah is one of the pathogens that Moderna has identified as the targets of its global public health strategy, an initiative aimed at developing vaccines for 15 infectious diseases that pose the biggest public health risk worldwide.

The virus – usually contracted through contact with fruit bats – first cause a documented outbreak in Malaysia and Singapore in 1998, with 265 cases that led to 105 deaths among humans as well as the near collapse of a billion-dollar pig-farming industry due to culling.

Since then, outbreaks have occurred almost every year around the world, mainly in India and Bangladesh, and there is no approved vaccine or drug treatment to protect humans or animals at risk.

People infected with the virus can have a range of symptoms – mild to severe – but at the top end of the spectrum it can causing encephalitis leading to coma or death.

While most cases come from close contact with animals, there have been reports of human to human transmission, raising fears that a highly transmissible strain could emerge with major public health consequences.

The virus has also been identified in bat species from a number of other countries, including Cambodia, Ghana, Indonesia, Madagascar, the Philippines, and Thailand, according to the World Health organisation (WHO).

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is sponsoring the clinical trial of Moderna's mRNA-1215 candidate, which will be carried out by scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

"Nipah virus poses a considerable pandemic threat because it mutates relatively easily, causes disease in a wide range of mammals, can transmit from person-to-person, and kills a large percentage of the people it infects," said NIAID Director Anthony Fauci in a statement.

"The need for a preventive Nipah virus vaccine is significant," he added.

The NIAID trial will involve 40 healthy adults who will be exposed to escalating doses of mRNA-1215 to evaluate its safety, tolerability and ability to stimulate an immune response.

Four groups of 10 participants each will receive two doses of the investigational vaccine via injection in the shoulder muscle – 25 mcg, 50 mcg or 100 mcg – given either four or 12 weeks apart. They will be followed for a year after the two-dose regimen completes.

Moderna's mRNA vaccine platform has already delivered the widely used COVID-19 shot, and is being deployed against a host of other infectious diseases, including influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), HIV, malaria and tuberculosis.

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