Brief Report on the Surveillance of Swine-origin Coronaviruses
Currently,there are six kinds of coronaviruses known to infect pigs,namely porcine epidemic diarrhea virus(PEDV),transmissible gastroenteritis virus(TGEV),porcine respiratory coronavirus(PRCV),swine acute diarrhoea syndrome coronavirus(SADS-CoV),porcine hemagglutinating encephalomyelitis virus(PHEV),porcine deltacoronavirus(PDCoV). Among the four genera of the family Coronaviridae,PEDV,TGEV,PRCV and SADS-CoV belong to Alphacoronavirus,PHEV belongs to Betacoronavirus,PDCoV belongs to Deltacoronavirus. Clinically,PRCV causes respiratory symptoms in piglets,PHEV leads to vomit and neurological symptoms in piglets,while the other four kinds of viruses cause diarrhea in swine.
Since 2011,a total of 2 915 samples(intestines or feces)of pigs with diarrhea symptom from 15 provinces in China have been tested for PEDV and TGEV by China Animal Health and Epidemiology Center,and 1 223 samples were PEDV-positive and 109 were TGEV-positive. The proportion of PEDV-positive samples and that of TGEV-positive samples of all the sample tested were 41.96%,3.74% respectively. Since 2014,a total of 12 430 tissue(lymph nodes or tonsils)samples of pigs in slaughterhouses from 14 provinces have been tested for PEDV,and 325 samples were PEDV-positive,the proportion of which was 2.61%. Retrospective detection of 2019-nCoV,which causes novel coronavirus pneumonia,was undertaken. A total of 2 658 tissue samples of pigs collected from 15 provinces during 2018 to 2019 were tested to be all 2019-nCoV negative.
The homology between 2019-nCoV and swine-origin coronaviruses was analyzed. The phylogenetic evolutionary analysis based on genome indicated that the nucleotide homology between 2019-nCoV and PHEV both of which belong to Betacoronavirus was only 54%,the other swine-origin coronaviruses which belong to Alphacoronavirus or Deltacoronavirus exhibited a longer genetic distance from 2019-nCoV. According to the data and analysis above,the possibility of 2019-nCoV originating from the known swine-origin coronaviruses could be preliminarily ruled out.