Production: Pablo Cantudo Bravo
Now that we are living the monitoring of the COVID-19 pandemic day by day, it is worth asking, what do we really know about coronaviruses? How long have we lived with them?
There are more than a hundred types of coronavirus that affect all types of animals. But, for now, we only know of seven types that can affect humans. Coronaviruses are responsible for about a third of common colds. The rest are caused by another type of virus, such as adenoviruses or rhinoviruses.
As well; In the 1960s, several laboratories were busy trying to find the unknown person responsible for that percentage of common colds. Until two laboratories simultaneously, one in the United States and one in England, came up with a new type of virus.
The first, in Chicago, by Dorothy Hamre and John Procknow. In 1965, while studying the tissue of college students with colds, Hamre stumbled upon a new type of virus. It was the first human coronavirus.
That same year, in England, David Tyrrel, Bynoe and June Almeida also found a virus of a different nature to that previously known, in the culture of the nostrils of a child with a cold. Today, the two human coronaviruses they discovered are considered to be the same species.
So, we can say that the credit for the discovery of human coronaviruses is shared by both laboratories.
Of course, in 1967 June Almeida obtained the first photograph under the microscope of a human coronavirus. A year later, in 1968, Tyrrell and his team coined the term ‘coronavirus’, due to the appearance of its proteins, which made it resemble the solar corona.
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