Editorial : Revisiting the One Health Approach in the Context of COVID-19: A Look into the Ecology of this Emerging Disease

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NE
US
Academic Publishers
Advances in Animal and Veterinary Sciences
March 2020 | Volume 8 | Issue 3 | Page 234
The “One Health” concept was introduced at the be-
ginning of the 2000s. In a few words, it summarized
an idea that had been known for more than a century; that
human health and animal health are interdependent and
bound to the health of the ecosystems in which they exist
(OIE, 2020). is concept is envisaged and implemented
by the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), but
also for multiple other organizations, as a collaborative
global approach to understanding risks for human and an-
imal health, including both domestic animals and wildlife,
and ecosystem health as a whole (OIE, 2020).
One Health is an approach that recognizes that human
health is closely related to animal health and environmen-
tal health. In a broad sense, the integrated health results
from the interaction between humans, animals, and the
environment, including other living beings, such as the
plants. is initiative is of great importance to the extent
that we can discuss it in the context of infectious disease
ecology, where both animals and the environment have
signicant relationships and relevance for the occurrence
of emerging zoonotic diseases in animals and humans
(Dhama et al., 2013; Bonilla-Aldana et al., 2019). Further-
more, thorough knowledge of the relationships between
host, pathogen and environment along with their ecology
is crucial to counter infectious pathogens.
Zoonotic diseases, in general, are good examples of this.
e threat of emerging and re-emerging zoonoses has now
increased globally due to several factors such as bloom in
trade and travel, climate change, rapidly evolving patho-
gens, population explosion, changing habbits and life-
style of humans, intensive integrated animal farming, and
others. Within the group of zoonotic diseases, there is a
wide range of infectious diseases caused by viral, bacterial,
parasitic, fungal, and even prion pathogens. In this con-
text, we must say that emerging diseases are particularly
associated with environmental and animal factors. Exog-
enous zoonotic pathogens commonly undergo mutations
and after jumping species barrier opt for adaptation to
the hostile environmental conditions before spillover to
humans (Ellwanger and Chies, 2018). e interaction
between these components is critical in the understating
of what happened in the case of the Severe Acute Res-
piratory Syndrome (SARS), the Middle East Respiratory
Syndrome (MERS) and now the Coronavirus Diseases
2019 (COVID-19), bcaused by the SARS-2 Coronavirus
(SARS-CoV-2) (Dhama et al., 2020; Rodriguez-Morales,
Bonilla-Aldana, et al., 2020) (Figure 1).
Editorial
D. Katterine Bonilla-alDana1,2, KulDeep Dhama3, alfonso J. roDriguez-morales2,4*
Revisiting the One Health Approach in the Context of COVID-19:
A Look into the Ecology of this Emerging Disease
Received | March 01, 2020; Accepted | March 06, 2020; Published | March 06,2020
*Correspondence | Alfonso J. Rodriguez-Morales, Public Health and Infection Research Group, Faculty of Health Sciences, Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira,
Pereira, Risaralda, Colombia; Email: ajrodriguezmmd@gmail.com
Citation | Bonilla-Aldana DK, Dhama K, Rodriguez-Morales AJ (2020). Revisiting the One Health Approach in the Context of COVID-19: A look into the
Ecology of this Emerging Disease. Adv. Anim. Vet. Sci. 8(3): 234-236.
DOI | http://dx.doi.org/10.17582/journal.aavs/2020/8.3.234.236
ISSN (Online) | 2307-8316; ISSN (Print) | 2309-3331
Keywords | One Health; Zoonoses; Coronavirus; COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2.
Copyright © 2020 Rodriguez-Morales et al. is is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestrict-
ed use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
1Incubator in Zoonosis (SIZOO), Biodiversity and Ecosystem Conservation Research Group (BIOECOS), Fun-
dación Universitaria Autónoma de las Américas, Sede Pereira, Pereira, Risaralda, Colombia.; 2Public Health and
Infection Research Group, Faculty of Health Sciences, Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira, Pereira, Risaralda, Co-
lombia; 3Division of Pathology, ICAR-Indian Veterinary Research Institute, Izatnagar 243 122, Bareilly, Uttar
Pradesh, India; 4Grupo de Investigación Biomedicina, Faculty of Medicine, Fundación Universitaria Autónoma de
las Américas, Pereira, Risaralda, Colombia.

NE
US
Academic Publishers
Advances in Animal and Veterinary Sciences
March 2020 | Volume 8 | Issue 3 | Page 235
Figure 1: One health approach in the context of coronavirus
disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by the SARS-CoV-2.
Over the past two decades we have seen the destructive
capacity of coronaviruses that are constantly evolving, re-
sulting in fatal outbreaks that pose a signicant threat to
global public health. e noval coronavirus that has recent-
ly emerged is considered as the third CoV outbreak in hu-
mans (Munster et al., 2020). e COVID-19, emerged in
Wuhan, China (Li et al., 2020; Liu & Saif, 2020), at the
end of 2019, causing respiratory, digestive, and systemat-
ic manifestations that adversely aect the human health.
is RNA virus can be transmitted from person to per-
son through airborne particles and drops, infecting type
2 pneumocytes and ciliated bronchial epithelial cells us-
ing ACE2 receptors (Lu et al., 2020; Rodriguez-Morales,
MacGregor, Kanagarajah, Patel, & Schlagenhauf, 2020).
e initial analysis of primary cases suggests a common ex-
posure point for all of the infected individuals, the seafood
market in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. e restaurants
of this market are quite famous for serving several types
of wildlife for human consumption (Hui et al., 2020). e
Huanan South China Seafood Market is an example for
a wet-market that sells poultry, bats, snakes, marmots and
other wild animals. Such wet-markets are hotspots that act
as a human-animal interphase, an ideal point where nov-
el zoonotic viruses can jump the species barrier resulting
in the emergence of novel pathogens. It is also related to
other coronaviruses that circulate among bats, including
SARS-CoV, so it is argued that such animals are the pos-
sible natural host, but other mammals should be involved
as intermediate hosts (Malik et al., 2020). Hence the cir-
cumstantial evidence available from the seafood market in
Wuhan points out the possibility of an intermediate host
in COVID-19 outbreak that transmitted the novel virus
to humans similar to their predecessors SARS and MERS.
In this way, it is imperative to understand the conditions
in which the transmission occurs, where the transmis-
sion is associated in the rst instance in an environment
in which there are favorable conditions for the existence
and interaction of natural host animals or reservoirs that
may be able to carry the SARS-CoV-2 under appropri-
ate circumstances and that in the interaction with the
human being the possibility of establishing transmission
is completed (Figure 1). is should lead to the discus-
sion on the integrative approach and studies of diseases
in the environment, disease ecology (Caron et al., 2015),
that goes beyond the clinical and pathological ndings in
human beings and occurrence in animals. In the case of
COVID-19, as occurs for other emerging zoonotic diseas-
es, it is essential to begun studies assessing which were the
environmental conditions in Wuhan where the rst cases
presented, but in general in places where studies of ani-
mal reservoirs of SARS-CoV-2 will take place, including
temperature, rainfall, humidity, vegetations, as other factors
relevant for the animal distribution, and also interactions
with human beings (Figure 1). COVID-19 outbreak is the
third instance where the virus has crossed the so called spe-
cies barrier twice from wild animals to human beings after
the occurrence of SARS, and MERS outbreaks. e pos-
sibility of a fourth outbreak can be expected in the coming
future, possibly at a huma-animal interphase just like the
wet-market in Wuhan.
It is crucial from the One Health perspective not only to
understand the transmission cycles but also to look for
mechanisms of prevention and mitigation of transmission
that may be useful for future risk conditions in the con-
text of emerging zoonotic diseases including coronavirus
as the case of COVID-19 (Ahmad et al., 2020). Strategic
breach in the interaction between host, pathogen and their
environment may provide an ecient control over many
probable zoonoses in future. Furthermore, strong intersec-
toral collaboration and coordination between the animal
and human health sectors at regional, national and inter-
national levels is an utmost necessasity to prevent, control
and eliminate emerging zoonoses. Urgent and strategic
adoption of One health approach along with an integrated
surveillance, monitoring and networking system, appro-
priately supported by rapid and conrmatory laboratory
investigation facilities, eective immunization/vaccina-
tion and therapeutic approaches along with adopting ap-
propriate prevention and control measures are altogether
highly anticipated to curb the emerging zoonoses globally
(Dhama et al., 2013; Awaidy et al., 2020). Besides these,
due attention towards public awareness and collaborative
disease control strategies need to be implemented in the
right directons amomg dierent sectors and stake-holders
(medical, veterinary, government departments, non-gov-
ernment organizations, NGOs) and various regulatory
health agencies for implementing warranted interventions
for eectively checking the transmisión and spread, and
control of the emerging, re-emerging and zoonotic threats
posed by infectious pathogens.

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Advances in Animal and Veterinary Sciences
March 2020 | Volume 8 | Issue 3 | Page 236
COVID-19 has presently spread to more than 82 coun-
tries, apart from China from where it originated. As per
the most recent situation report of World Health Organ-
ization (WHO), a total of 94,355 conrmed cases and
3,222 humans deaths have been reported till March 4,
2020 (WHO, 2020). is virus was designated as a Pub-
lic Health International Emergency on January 30, 2020
and a potential pandemic. Seeing the rapid increase in the
number of cases aected and its further spread to many
countries in all the populated regions of the world, except
Antarctica. WHO has now increased the risk assessment
of this emerging coronavirus to a very high risk category.
Researchers and health agencies accross the globe are put-
ting their high eorts to hault the spread of this virus by
adopting appropriate prevention and control measures, and
are pacing high to develop eective vaccines and therapeu-
tics to avoid any pandemic situation. In this direction, One
health approach is also critical for countering COVID-19
and other emerging coronaviral and viral zoonotic diseases.
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