A team of Chinese researchers has discovered a new bat coronavirus that entails risk of transmission from animal to humansbecause it uses the same human receiver as the virus that causes COVID-19, reveals the South China Morning Post.
The study has been directed by Shi Zhengglian outstanding virologist known as the ‘Murciélago woman’ due to her extensive research on the Cronavirus de Murciélago, in the Guangzhou laboratory together with researchers from the Guangzhou Academy of Sciences, the University of Wuhan and the Wuhan Virology Institute.
Shi is better known for his work at the Wuhan Institute, which has been in the center of the controversy over the origins of COVID, with a theory that suggests that I came from a laboratory leak in the city.
While there is still no consensus on the origin of the virus, some studies suggest that it originated in bats and jumped to humans through an intermediary animal host. Shi has denied that the institute was the culprit of the outbreak.
The last discovery is a new coronavirus lineage HKU5 First identified in the Pipistrelle bat Japanese in Hong Kong.
The new virus comes from the subgenre Merbecoviruswhich also includes the virus that causes the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (Mers).
The virus is able to join the human angiotensin converter (ACE2), the same receiver used by the Sars-Cov-2 virus, which causes the COVID-19, To infect cells.
Merbecovirus have been detected In minks and pangolinesthe animal that is believed to be the intermediary of the covid between bats and humans.
This, Chinese scientists wrote, “Suggests frequent cross transmission of these viruses between bats and other animal species. “
“This study reveals a different lineage of HKU5-COV in bats that They use human cells efficiently and underlines its potential zoonotic risk, “they continue.
HKU5-COV viruses were first detected in bats in 2006, but the new data suggest that the HKU5-COV-2 has a “greater potential for infection between species” than others. However“It still remains to be investigated” The possibility that HKU5-COV-2 is transmitted to humans.
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