A new coronavirus may be jumping from dogs to people

“This is the first report of a novel canine-feline recombinant alphacoronavirus isolated from a human pneumonia patient,” the study authors wrote. The find is nothing short of worrying, since it seems to be the first known instance of a canine coronavirus jumping the species barrier over to humans. It also seems to carry a mutation unique among canine coronaviruses but not other human coronaviruses: a deletion of genetic material in its N protein that could be allowing it to better infect us. “Apparently the deletion is somehow associated with [the virus’s] adaptation during this jump from animal to human,” study author Anastasia Vlasova, an animal virologist at Ohio State University, told NPR.