A new bat coronavirus that carries the risk of animal-to-human transmission, similar to the one that caused the COVID-19 pandemic, has been discovered in China. According to the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the new virus called HKU5-CoV-2 was found by a team of virologists led by Shi Zhengli, the famed scientist known as “Batwoman” for her lifetime work in coronaviruses, especially at the Wuhan Institute, which has been at the centre of the theory suggesting COVID-19 came from a lab leak – something China has denied repeatedly.
The Chinese researchers found that the new virus has similarities to SARS CoV-2 – the virus which led to the Covid pandemic – because this too can infiltrate human cells called ACE2 the same way Covid did, the outlet reported.
What is HKU5-CoV-2?
HKU5-CoV-2 is a coronavirus belonging to the merbecovirus subgenus, which also includes the virus that causes Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). Scientists found that the new virus can bind to human ACE2, making it similar to SARS-CoV-2 and NL63 (a common cold virus).
During a lab test, the team discovered that HKU5-CoV-2 was able to infect human cell cultures in the mini-human organ models the scientists used.
“Bat merbecoviruses, which are phylogenetically related to MERS-CoV, pose a high risk of spillover to humans, either through direct transmission or facilitated by intermediate hosts,” the study said, as per Newsweek. However, it noted that the potential for the virus to spillover into humans “remains to be investigated”.
“Structural and functional analyses indicate that HKU5-CoV-2 has a better adaptation to human ACE2 than lineage 1 HKU5-CoV,” the Chinese research team wrote in the study.
“Authentic HKU5-CoV-2 infected human ACE2-expressing cell lines and human respiratory and enteric organoids. This study reveals a distinct lineage of HKU5-CoVs in bats that efficiently use human ACE2 and underscores their potential zoonotic risk,” they concluded.
It remains unknown whether this discovery will cause any disease in humans.
Could we be facing another pandemic?
When asked about concerns raised by the report of another pandemic resulting from this new virus, Dr Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota, called the reaction to the study “overblown.” He said there is a lot of immunity in the population to similar SARS viruses compared with 2019, which may reduce the pandemic risk.
Notably, the study itself has stated that the virus has significantly less binding affinity to human ACE2 than SARS-CoV-2, and other suboptimal factors for human adaptation suggest the “risk of emergence in human populations should not be exaggerated”.
