Monkeypox has spread unprecedentedly to nearly 100 countries and infected more than 51,000 people since 1 May 2022. This large-scale outbreak constituted a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), as declared by the World Health Organization. To better recognize and control this outbreak, we explore here through phylogenetic analysis the origins of MPXVs and their strains circulating in 2022, which remain unclear so far. Our results suggest that MPXVs possibly originated from some cowpox viruses and three lineages of MPXVs within Clade IIb circulated in 2022. Our results also suggest that two MPXVs respectively similar to the two MPXVs exported from Nigeria to the USA in 2021, ON676708/USA/2021 and ON676707/USA/2021, evolved into two lineages and sparked the large-scale outbreak in 2022, after their unknown evolutionary and epidemiological journeys possibly in Nigeria, the USA, or other countries before May 2022. This view does not stigmatize any country, because monkeypox is an endemic zoonosis in west Africa with wildlife reservoirs, and its large-scale outbreak in 2022 also resulted from the global decline of population immunity against smallpox due to the cease of vaccination against smallpox decades ago.

The newly established virus family Phenuiviridae in Bunyavirales harbors viruses infecting three kingdoms of host organisms (animals, plants, and fungi), which is rare in known virus families. Many phenuiviruses are arboviruses and replicate in two distinct hosts (e.g., insects and humans or rice). Multiple phenuiviruses, such as Dabie bandavirus, Rift Valley fever phlebovirus, and Rice stripe tenuivirus, are highly pathogenic to humans, animals, or plants.They impose heavy global burdens on human health, livestock industry, and agriculture and are research hotspots. In recent years the taxonomy of Phenuiviridae has been expanded greatly, and researches on phenuiviruses have made significant progress. With these advances, this review drew a novel panorama regarding the biomedical significance, distribution, morphology, genomics, taxonomy, evolution, replication, transmission, pathogenesis, and control of phenuiviruses, to aid researchers in various fields to recognize this highly adaptive and very important virus family.

Hantaviridae currently encompasses seven genera and 53 species. Multiple hantaviruses such as Hantaan virus, Seoul virus, Dobrava-Belgrade virus, Puumala virus, Andes virus, and Sin Nombre virus are highly pathogenic to humans. They cause hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS) and hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome or hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HCPS/HPS) in many countries. Some hantaviruses infect wild or domestic animals without causing severe symptoms. Rodents, shrews, and bats are reservoirs of various mammalian hantaviruses. Recent years have witnessed significant advancements in the study of hantaviruses including genomics, taxonomy, evolution, replication, transmission, pathogenicity, control, and patient treatment. Additionally, new hantaviruses infecting bats, rodents, shrews, amphibians, and fish have been identified. This review compiles these advancements to aid researchers and the public in better recognizing this zoonotic virus family with global public health significance.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused by the coronavirus severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 remains risky worldwide. We elucidate here that good IDM (isolation, disinfection, and maintenance of health) is powerful to reduce COVID-19 deaths based on the striking differences in COVID-19 case fatality rates among various scenarios. IDM means keeping COVID-19 cases away from each other and from other people, disinfecting their living environments, and maintaining their health through good nutrition, rest, and treatment of symptoms and pre-existing diseases (not through specific antiviral therapy). Good IDM could reduce COVID-19 deaths by more than 85% in 2020 and more than 99% in 2022. This is consistent with the fact that good IDM can minimize co-infections and maintain body functions and the fact that COVID-19 has become less pathogenic (this fact was supported with three novel data in this report). Although IDM has been frequently implemented worldwide to some degree, IDM has not been highlighted sufficiently. Good IDM is relative, nonspecific, flexible, and feasible in many countries, and can reduce deaths of some other relatively mild infectious diseases. IDM, vaccines, and antivirals aid each other to reduce COVID-19 deaths.The IDM concept and strategy can aid people to improve their health behavior and fight against COVID-19 and future pandemics worldwide.

Some nucleotide insertions or deletions (indels) in protein-coding open reading frames lead to frameshift mutations (FSMs) which can change amino acid sequences drastically. FSMs are widely distributed in the genomes of many organisms. However, few studies have been reported regarding frequencies of FSMs in microevolution or macroevolution. Many viruses evolve much more rapidly than cellular organisms, and they are hence suitable to investigate frequencies of FSMs in microevolution or macroevolution. In this report, we identified 667 FSMs in gene sequences of 13 virus families and each FSM changed approximately 11 amino acid residues on average. Of the FSMs, 89.21% were 2-indel compensatory FSMs, and the remaining were 1-, 3-, 4-, 5-indel FSMs. We found that FSMs usually occurred more frequently in the viruses of the same family with smaller sequence identities, and FSMs occurred in the sequences of with identities of 60.0−69.9% more frequently than in the sequences with identities of 90.0−99.9% or 80.0−89.9% by approximately 34.9 or 13.1 times on average. We also found FSMs occurred at different frequencies among genes in the same virus genome, among species in the same virus family, or among virus families (e.g., more frequently in Coronaviridae than in Orthomyxoviridae). These results suggest that FSMs are more frequent in the inter-species or macroevolution than in the intra-species or microevolution of viruses. They provide novel evidence for the hopeful monster hypothesis in evolutionary biology. They inspire researchers to investigate the roles, frequencies, features, and functions of FSMs in other viruses and cellular organisms.

Highlights COVID nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) impacted on other infectious diseases. The impacts on 36 infectious diseases in China were calculated. COVID NPIs increased the incidences of some infectious diseases. COVID NPIs reduced the incidences of some other infectious diseases. The impacts were calculated with optimized methods.

Hantaviridae currently encompasses seven genera and 54 species. Multiple hantaviruses, such as Hantaan virus, Seoul virus, Dobrava-Belgrade virus, Puumala virus, Andes virus, and Sin Nombre virus, are highly pathogenic to humans. They cause hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS) and hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome or hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HCPS/HPS) in many countries. Some hantaviruses infect wild or domestic animals without causing severe symptoms. Rodents, shrews, and bats are reservoirs of various mammalian hantaviruses. Studies on the genomics, taxonomy, evolution, replication, transmission, pathogenicity, and control of hantaviruses, as well as patient treatment, have made significant advances in recent years. Meanwhile, novel hantaviruses infecting bats, rodents, shrews, amphibians, and fish have been identified. This systematic review compiles these advancements to aid researchers and the public in better recognizing this zoonotic virus family with global public health significance.

Human monkeypox, caused by monkeypox virus, has spread unprecedentedly to more than 100 countries since May 2022. Here we summarized the epidemiology of monkeypox through a literature review and elucidated the risks and elimination strategies of this outbreak mainly based on the summarized epidemiology. We demonstrated that monkeypox virus became more contagious and less virulent in 2022, which could result from the fact that the virus entered a special transmission network favoring close contacts (i.e., sexual behaviors of men who have sex with men outside Africa) and the possibility that the virus accumulated a few adaptive mutations. We gave the reasons to investigate whether cattle, goats, sheep, and pigs are susceptible to monkeypox virus and whether infection with monkeypox virus could be latent in some primates. We listed six potential scenarios for the future of the outbreak (e.g., the outbreak could lead to endemicity outside Africa with increased transmissibility or virulence). We also listed multiple factors aiding or impeding the elimination of the outbreak. We showed that the control measures strengthened worldwide after the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) could eliminate the outbreak in 2022. We clarified eight strategies, i.e., publicity and education, case isolation, vaccine stockpiling, risk-based vaccination or ring vaccination, importation quarantine, international collaboration, and laboratory management, for the elimination of the outbreak.