What we know about the Langya virus outbreak in China

The Langya virus has infected 35 people in Eastern China, and with many reporting symptoms such as fever, cough and fatigue.

The new virus is part of a group of "growing concern" in the virus population, experts say, because of their ability to rapidly change.

While there have been no reported deaths, the Taiwan Centre for Disease Control is monitoring the virus.

Langya virus (LayV) was first reported in Eastern China in 2018, found after testing a patient with a fever who had recently been in contact with a wild animal, according to a letter to the editor published in the New England Journal of Medicine last week.

Further testing of people with fever revealed 35 more cases of acute LayV infection in the Shandong and Henan provinces of China.

The Langya virus is a type of Henipavirus, like the more well-known Hendra and Nipah viruses.

Kirby Institute Dr Hossain Sazzad, who is part of the University of NSW's Viral Immunology Systems Program, said viruses of the henipavirus genus have caused havoc in the past.

"This virus [family] actually caused a lot of devastation and crisis around the world," Dr Sazzad said.

"There was a Nipah virus outbreak in Malaysia in 1998, which spread to Bangladesh after one or two years -It had a virality of 80 to 90 per cent."

Dr Sazzad said the virus group was "highly divergent" and a "growing concern in the virus population".

There is no evidence the Langya virus can be transmitted between people, and the current cases appear to have jumped from animals to humans.

A shrew is the most likely carrier of the Langya virus, according to the letter to the editor in The New England Journal of Medicine.

"From what we saw in the New England Journal of Medicine, this virus doesn't have person-to-person properties, but jumped from an animal to a human," Dr Sazzad said.

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He said infectious diseases that come from animals were common.

Viruses can change properties at any time, and while there was no person-to-person transmission now, a new virus could crop up with that ability in the future, he said.

Australian National University infectious disease specialist Associate Professor Sanjaya Senanayake said the announcement of a new infection was "not surprising".

"Over the last five decades, there have been around fifty new infections described," Associate Professor Sanjaya Senanayake said.

"The vast majority, such as LayV, monkeypox and COVID-19, are viruses that have jumped from the animal to the human world," he said.

Now the virus has been identified, monitoring any transmission or changes is vital, Dr Sazzad said.

"It's very good that it was identified and identified early," he said.

Dr Sazzad said we should stick with standard procedures and precautions, not just focusing on specific pathogens that are known, but also those that are unknown.