Chinese scientists based in Wuhan have discovered a novel Coronavirus strain in a colony of bats in South Africa that has the potential to cause more devastation than any other known Coronavirus strain, including the one that started the COVID-19 pandemic.
The new Coronavirus, known as NeoCov, is closely linked to MERS-COV, a Coronavirus that was initially discovered in Saudi Arabia in 2012 and causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, a viral respiratory ailment.
MERS-COV is a member of the Beta-COV lineage C, a family of Coronaviruses with a death rate of 35 percent, which is 23 times greater than COVID-19’s fatality rate of 1.5 percent.
Although NeoCov is now solely affecting bats, it might be transmitted to humans with a single mutation. If that happens, it could be more contagious and more deadly than all previous Coronavirus variants combined.
Laboratory testing have revealed that the new virus renders the antibodies produced by SARS-COV-2 and MERS-COV ineffective, therefore immunity generated by previous infection or vaccination with other Coronaviruses may be insufficient to defend against NeoCov.
These are the findings of a recent study conducted by a group of scientists headquartered in Wuhan, the capital of China’s Hubei region, which is thought to be the birthplace of SARS-COV-2, the Coronavirus that causes COVID-19 infection.
The paper has not yet been peer-reviewed, but it is available at bioRxiv, an open-access biological sciences preprint site.
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