Chinese team finds new bat coronavirus that could infect humans via same route as COVID-19
(VOVWORLD) - A Chinese team has found a new bat coronavirus that carries the risk of animal-to-human transmission.
 A fully protected ambulance staff waits for his colleague to take an order outside the hospital in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, January 26, 2020. (Photo: Yonhap) |
The virus uses the same human receptor as the virus that causes COVID-19. The latest discovery is a new lineage of the HKU5 coronavirus first identified in the Japanese pipistrelle bat in Hong Kong.
The study was led by Shi Zhengli, a leading virologist with extensive research on bat coronaviruses along with researchers from the Guangzhou Academy of Sciences, Wuhan University and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
A paper by a team from the University of Washington in Seattle and Wuhan University earlier said they could not detect "efficient" human binding from the HKU5 strain. But Shi's team said the new HKU5 had better adapted to human receptor compared with lineage 1 of the virus and "may have a broader host range and a higher potential for interspecies infection."
They said that more monitoring of the virus was needed but added its efficiency was "significantly lower" than the COVID virus and the "risk of emergence in human populations should not be exaggerated."