Page 64 - Poultry-Punch April 2020 edition

POULTRY PUNCH ARTICLE
AVIAN CORONA

VIRAL DISEASES

Prof. R.N.Sreenivas Gowda,
Poultry disease specialist and former VC,KVAFSU,Bidar.
drrns.gowda@gmail.com

he word ‘Corona’ has become a street popular language, it Both SARS- and MERS-CoVs crossed the species barrier from bats to
is so popular that even the people in remote areas of the humans through civet cats and camels as intermediate organisms.
Tvillages speaks and make fun of it. Now everyone knows The current Novel Coronavirus covid-19 is the other face of SARS
about the difference between virus and bacteria and become so and hence called SARSII baffling the entire world.
familiar of these terms. No surprise that the children born in this Wild bird species serve as a natural reservoir of many emerging
period may named either COVID for male and CORONA for female zoonotic pathogens and thus have a significant impact on public
child. Thanks to the news media and television media for their health. They are also the source of pathogens dangerous to
observations and creating awareness of this pandemic disease domestic animals, and such infections could have socio-economic
COVID-19.All the corona will not create serious infections, if only consequences.
genetically modified or mutated to highly pathogenic strain then it
will cause infection. The role of this corona virus causing respiratory
infection in human was detected only in the year 1960.
But, the corona virus is not new to our poultry scientists. They
are aware of corona virus as early as 1930’s. Since nine decades
poultry scientists are working on various aspects of its existence,
behavior, pathogenesis, molecular biology, vaccine manufacturing
and control of this virus.So far there is no history of causing
infectious bronchitis in any scientist or the farmers working in
poultry.
Coronaviruses (CoVs) are a large group of enveloped viruses
with a single-strand RNA genome, which continuously circulate
in mammals and birds and pose a threat to livestock, companion
animals, and humans. CoVs harboured by avian species are
classified to the genera gamma- and delta corona viruses. Within
the gamma-CoVs the main representative is avian coronavirus, a Proposed epidemiology and transmission of IBV among wild
taxonomic name which includes the highly contagious Infectious birds and poultry (Adopted from Woo et al.,2009)
bronchitis viruses (IBVs) in chickens and similar viruses infecting Avian coronavirus (IBV) is a coronavirus which infects birds,
other domestic birds such as turkeys, guinea fowls, or quails. causing the associated disease, infectious bronchitis (IB). It is a
Similarly to other RNA viruses, coronaviruses (CoVs) are highly infectious avian pathogen which affects the respiratory
characterised by high genetic diversity driven by mutation and tract, gut, kidney and reproductive systems of chickens.
recombination, which can lead to the emergence of new viruses. IBV affects the performance of both meat producing and egg
Such new pathogens can have new features which even enable producing chickens and is responsible for substantial economic loss
them to switch to new hosts . These newly created viruses can within the poultry industry.
acquire zoonotic potential, as witnessed by the Severe Acute
Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), the epidemic from Southern China Host Specificity
in 2003 caused by SARS-CoVs. This disease, termed “atypical The domestic fowl (Gallus gallus) and pheasant (Phasianus spp.)
pneumonia”, was diagnosed in humans in 29 countries and had a are considered to be natural hosts for IBV but, other IBV-like
nearly 10% mortality rate. In 2012, there emerged a subsequent coronaviruses have been identified in nondomestic avian species
disease caused by a novel coronavirus, the so-called Middle East including pheasant, peafowl, turkey, teal, geese, pigeon, penguins
respiratory syndrome (MERS) with even higher mortality rates. quail, duck, and Amazon parrot. Antigenic similarities between

64 April, 2020