New Coronavirus Transmissible to Humans: Discovery in China

After SARS-CoV-2 , the coronavirus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic , news has arrived from China of the discovery of a new bat coronavirus that, at least in theory, could be transmitted from animals to humans, just like SARS-CoV-2, since the new virus uses the same human receptor as the coronavirus discovered in 2019.

The new coronavirus , renamed HKU5-CoV-2 , was discovered by the team of Chinese researcher Shi Zhengli, who has been studying bat viruses for years and who in the past also worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The new coronavirus, according to the article published in the peer-reviewed journal Cell , was first identified in a Japanese bat in Hong Kong and belongs to the merbecovirus subgenus, the same that includes the virus responsible for Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) . HKU5-CoV-2, according to the experts' discovery, is able to bind to the human angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) , the same receptor used by the SARS-CoV-2 virus to infect cells in the human body.

"We report the discovery and isolation of a distinct lineage of HKU5-CoV, which can utilize not only bat Ace2, but also human Ace2 and several mammalian Ace2 orthologs (genes found in different species with a common origin)," wrote researchers led by Shi Zhengli. Faced with this discovery, what are the risks of a new coronavirus pandemic ? At the moment, the scientific community is calling for caution. While it is true that the alert must remain high, it is equally true that the risk of a new pandemic is very low .

"No human being has been infected by the new virus and the possibility that this agent spreads is linked to the occurrence of a succession of events that are theoretically possible, but have a low probability of occurring," Carlo Federico Perno , director of the Microbiology and Immunology Diagnostics Unit at the IRCCS Bambino Gesù Pediatric Hospital in Rome, explained to ANSA .

Gianni Rezza , associate professor of Hygiene at the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University in Milan, is of the same opinion, according to whom the simple discovery of the new coronavirus " does not mean that this virus will make the leap between species , starting chains of interhuman transmission capable of causing an epidemic event".

"This new coronavirus could be a problem if it encounters an immune system like ours, completely lacking in antibodies to intercept it. Now the important thing as always is to give news as soon as possible, therefore also from Chinese colleagues who must tell us everything: especially if there will be a first human case", stated instead Matteo Bassetti , director of Infectious Diseases at the San Martino Polyclinic Hospital in Genoa.