Med Express A case report published in the New England Journal of Medicine describes a previously unidentified orthonairovirus, dubbed Wetland virus (WELV), in a man bitten by a tick at a wetland park in Inner Mongolia, China, in 2019. After isolating the virus from the index patient, a team led by Beijing Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology researchers conducted surveillance to determine the prevalence of WELV infection among hospitalized patients with fever and a history of a tick bite.
The index patient was a 61-year-old man hospitalized in June 2019 after developing a fever and multiple organ dysfunction following a tick bite five days earlier and investigated its ability to cause disease in mice.