![]() ![]() People with severe COVID-19 pneumonia often arrive at the hospital with unusually low oxygen levels. We need to better understand how coronaviruses cause lung injury to prepare for the next pandemic. SARS-CoV-2 is the third novel coronavirus to cause human outbreaks in the 21st century, following SARS-CoV in 2003 and MERS-CoV in 2012. This is the story of how a team, assembled during the pandemic, recognized the mechanism by which these viruses were causing lung injury and lowering oxygen levels in patients: It is a throwback to the primitive war between viruses and bacteria - more specifically, between this novel virus and the evolutionary offspring of bacteria, our mitochondria. ![]() In Canada about 1.1 per cent of infected patients (almost 46,000 people) have died. Approximately five per cent of people infected with SARS-CoV-2 suffer respiratory failure (low blood oxygen) requiring hospitalization. Ultimately, mitochondria became the powerhouses within all human cells.įast-forward to the rise of novel coronaviruses like SARS-CoV-2, and the global spread of COVID-19. Some of those bacteria eventually became mitochondria, synergistically adapting to life within eukaryotic cells (cells that have a nucleus containing chromosomes). ![]() Because viruses can’t reproduce without a host, they’ve been attacking bacteria for millions of years. Viruses and bacteria have a very long history. ![]()
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