The news has caused alarm: Chinese scientists have discovered new properties of the coronavirus in bats. It is the HKU5-CoV-2 virus that can infect humans.
Memories of the beginning of the corona pandemic, which began exactly five years ago in Wuhan, China, quickly woke up. In the new study, author Shi Zhengli, known as “Batwoman,” and her team warn about HKU5-CoV-2 and its “high risk of transmission to humans, either through direct transmission or through intermediate hosts.” The study is published in the renowned journal Cell, reports Vecernji List.
HKU5-CoV-2 is a coronavirus from the merbecoviridae family, which also includes the MERS virus. The study says: “The merbecoviridae from bats, which are phylogenetically related to MERS-CoV, pose a high risk of transmission to humans, either by direct transmission or through intermediate hosts.”
“The HKU5-CoV-2 virus is not new or newly discovered; we have known about its existence since 2006. But it has now been proven that the virus has changed and can recognize human structures with its surface molecules,” virologist Timo Ulrichs told the German portal Focus.de. There are hundreds of coronaviruses, but only a few can infect humans, including SARS, SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes Covid-19) and MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome). The HKU5-CoV-2 virus uses the ACE2 receptor to infect organisms – just like Sars-CoV-2. Thanks to its ACE2 binding site, it has a greater potential to infect humans than other coronaviruses because it resembles Sars-CoV-2 and NL63 (the common cold virus). HKU5-CoV-2 was able to infect human cell cultures in mini-organ models that the scientists used.
The study itself, according to Reuters, found that the virus has a significantly lower binding affinity for human ACE2 than Sars-CoV-2 and that “the risk of an outbreak in the human population should not be overstated.”
Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota, also described fears of a pandemic as “overblown.” There is a high level of population immunity to similar Sars viruses compared to 2020, which could reduce the risk of a pandemic, the epidemiologist said.
