Zoom Recording
Passcode: #A3H=DMz

Date: Thursday, January 19, 2023

Time: 12-1p via Zoom
*to receive Zoom information, please email: kddunn@utmb.edu

Speaker: Dr. Gregory C. Gray MD, MPH
Professor Department of Infectious Disease, Epidemiology, Microbiology and Immunology, and Global Health & Emerging Diseases

Abstract: Globally, our current pre-pandemic pathogen surveillance strategies failed to detect both the 2009 and 2019 pandemic viruses. It seems clear that these strategies are not working. They are also not sustainable or widely adaptable due to their high cost and technical complexity. In this presentation, Professor Gray will review these problems and present a One Health-oriented surveillance strategy that is better targeted and lower in cost. Professor Gray and his collaborators have recently used this strategy in detecting multiple respiratory virus cross-species spillovers between various animal species as well as between animals and humans. Most recently this work has yielded the detection, culture, and full genome assembly of a novel canine-like alphacoronavirus in a pneumonia patient in Malaysia. This virus, CCoV-HuPn-2018, was detected with pan-species coronavirus diagnostics and would be missed by modern clinical diagnostics.The virus is likely widespread as it was recently found among people working in Haiti as a cause of their respiratory illness. CCoV-HuPn-2018 likely represents the 8th known human coronavirus and a new pandemic threat.Finding such viruses before they fully adapt to cause efficient human-to-human transmission will help to preempt future pandemics.

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