Be ready to face future unknown viruses, without panic but with lucidity.
Article by SudOuest, published by Isabelle Castéra on September 10, 2021
Virologist professor Emeritus of the CNRS, the Bordeaux researcher Hervé Fleury carried out a study on emerging viruses. He says “better face reality and be ready.” What does the world of tomorrow need to prepare for?
Professor Hervé Fleury is a kind of virus hunter. He tracks them down, scents them, guesses them. And when he holds one, he dissects it. Part of his career has been devoted to HIV, human immunodeficiency virus, AIDS, but also yellow fever, madman, Zika, Westnile, or H5, H7, H9, the more well-known influenza viruses of type A under the name of bird flu. Two years in Africa with the Pasteur Institute to observe arboviruses transmitted by blood-sucking insects, a stay in New York in 1978 where he was interested in a mouse coronavirus, then at the end of the 1980s he was in Bordeaux, he directed the Information and Care Center for Human Immunodeficiency (CISIH), before returning to India to deliver lectures on emerging viruses, at the request of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Prof. Hervé Fleury, photographed by Laurent Theillet.
In the meantime, he continues his quest. Finding an AIDS vaccine was the obsession of this elegant researcher, professor emeritus of the CNRS. He has never given up, continuing his work, indefatigable in the face of the enemy. Sars Cov2 picked him up in January 2020, he did not expect such a pernicious virus. “I had anticipated the flu, an influenza virus,” he admits, “rather than this coronavirus. Yes I was surprised. Rather, I expected to see the emergence of a new influenza, recombinant between pigs, birds and humans, like the 2009 flu, H1N1. I had put forward another hypothesis, the adaptation of avian flu to humans, which, moreover, was perhaps at the origin of the Spanish flu in 1918. 50% of mortality anyway, that would have been terrible…”
The first to recommend the mask
Past the astonishment at the emergence of SarsCov2, whose particularity remains, according to him, high contagiousness, he got his head into the new subject, carrying out scientific bibliography work. Seeking the first studies around the world, observing situations, anticipating, analyzing. Despite the hiccups surrounding the onset of the health crisis, he was one of the first scientists to worry about the airborne aspect of the virus. “The absence of a mask is nonsense,” he wrote in the columns of “South West” at the very beginning of the epidemic, at a time when his words, deemed too anxiety-provoking, were not unanimous.
“This Sars Cov2 is related to the 2003 Sars that we knew,” continues the Bordeaux scientist, “and to the MERS-Cov (Middle east respiratory syndrome) respiratory syndrome in the Middle East transmitted by bats and camels. So ultimately, it's not very surprising that we are dealing with respiratory syndrome, however this high transmissibility has proven to be formidable.”
Beware of mosquitoes
All scientists today have their eyes fixed on tomorrow. With the emergence of new viruses, more pandemics are to be expected. “It's true, there is no question of playing the Care Bears or hiding reality, continues Professor Fleury. It is not about sowing terror, but about knowing, keeping your eyes open and preparing. “Global warming, deforestation, the thawing of permafrost, globalization, air transport…” We have identified a long list of viruses dangerous for humans from the animal reservoir with which we are increasingly in contact, this being linked to the growth of the human population and to ecological changes, he explains. For example, who knows about the Kyasanur forest virus in India, identified as a result of deforestation around Bangalore?
"We will have epidemics linked to mosquitoes, they will be restricted and localized."
One of the scientists' hypotheses is the emergence of arboviruses in Europe: dengue, Zika, chikungunya, Westnile carried by mosquitoes. “We will have epidemics linked to mosquitoes,” assures Professor Fleury, "they will be restricted and localized. We have to learn to control these insects in one way or another, because for ecological reasons we have slowed down on insecticides. An infected person arriving from Africa or Southeast Asia, for example, bitten by an indigenous mosquito can transmit the disease. This is the globalized world.”
The permafrost thaw
Like all his counterparts, Professor Fleury is worried about the permafrost thaw. What about bacteria and viruses released due to global warming? “We don't know, even if this hypothesis is not the most worrying,” he says. “But we could see the reappearance of deoxyribonucleic acid viruses that infect humans and animals, such as poxviruses, in particular, smallpox.”
Scientist announces possible new viruses from plants
The scientist voices the possibility of new viruses from plants. “It was always believed that there was no passage from plants to humans via insects,” he explains. However, the question should be asked again. “To understand this theory, he recalls in particular the origins of Ebola in Sudan and Zaire, in 1976.” The Ebola reservoir was the chimpanzee, but upstream from the chimpanzee, there was a basic reservoir which was thought to be a moment that it could be a plant virus. It was actually the bat.
In the meantime, in the face of the Covid pandemic, the urgency of the situation has allowed progress. Thus, biological analysis laboratories have made molecular diagnostics and genome sequencing even more efficient. The World Health Organization plans to reposition a central viral emergence laboratory in Berlin, Germany. “Logical, observes Professor Fleury, the Germans were the most reactive, the first to carry out the molecular diagnosis of Sars-Cov 2 in Europe!”
