Canada - WHO: "Previously Unknown variant to Measles Virus circulating in Ontario"

Canada - WHO: "Previously Unknown variant to Measles Virus circulating in Ontario" . HT: Crof.

Via The Globe and Mail, health reporter Kelly Grant writes: Measles virus circulating in Ontario is a variant previously unknown to WHO. Excerpt:

The measles outbreak in Canada’s largest city was already a minor epidemiological puzzle when scientists discovered something that deepened the mystery. 

Of the 11 Greater Toronto Area patients diagnosed with the highly contagious illness since the end of January, none are connected to each other in any way that public health staff could discover through interviews with the patients or their parents. None had recently travelled outside Canada to a place where they might have caught the measles. 

Public health officials had hoped that genetic analysis of the measles viruses in these cases might shed light on where the Toronto outbreak came from. 

Instead, scientists found something new: The version of the measles virus circulating in Ontario is a variant that has never before been reported to the World Health Organization database that contains descriptions of more than 22,000 slightly different viral sequences of the measles virus found across the globe. 

The measles virus is constantly mutating, meaning subtly distinct versions are regularly added to the global storehouse, said Matthew Gilmour, the new scientific director general who oversees Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg, where the genetic sequencing was done. 

“It’s new to us now, but as other countries uncover this virus as well, they’ll have a chance to put it in the same database,” Dr. Gilmour said. “The puzzle will start to become clear then as to what the actual origin of this strain is.”