New coronavirus discovered in China ‘only small step' from infecting humans
A new coronavirus discovered in China is only a small step from mutating and causing another global pandemic, experts have warned.
Scientists believe the variant, called HKU5-CoV-2, may infect a broader range of animals than Covid-19 – which caused millions of deaths – and may have more potential for jumping between species.
US researchers fear that HKU5-CoV-2, found in China, in February, could also infect humans, leading to a widespread outbreak.
The new study, published in Nature Communications, looked at a lesser-known group of coronaviruses called merbecoviruses, which includes HKU5 and MERS-CoV, which is responsible for the deadly Middle East Respiratory Syndrome.
The team from Washington State University looked at how the new pathogen interacts with human cells.
They found that a small change in the virus's spike protein could allow it to attach to human ACE2 cells in people's throats, mouths and noses.
HKU5-CoV-2 can infect and replicate inside human cells in both the airways and gut.
According to the World Health Organisation, about 35 per cent of people infected with Middle East Respiratory Syndrome die. Since 2012, some 27 countries have reported cases, leading to 858 known deaths due to the infection, which spread from camels.
But when HKU5 was discovered in February, scientists warned against exaggerating the risks because it does not enter human cells as readily as Sars-CoV-2, which caused Covid-19.
HKU5 was first detected in bats by scientists from the Chinese laboratory where some say Covid originated in 2019.
Prof Michael Letko, a virologist who co-led the study, said: 'HKU5 viruses in particular really hadn't been looked at much, but our study shows how these viruses infect cells.
'What we also found is HKU5 viruses may be only a small step away from being able to spill over into humans.'
When Covid-19 emerged it was widely blamed on markets in China where different breeds of wild animal are kept caged and often slaughtered close to other animals. Meat is sold at the open-air stalls.
Critics said the markets were the perfect breeding ground for new zoonotic diseases – those that spread to humans – to emerge.
The scientists, whose experiments studied how the new pathogen interacts with human cells, believe the virus would have to carry certain mutations if it were to infect humans.
'These viruses are closely related to MERS, so we have to be concerned if they ever infect humans,' Prof Letko said.
'While there's no evidence they've crossed into people yet, the potential is there and that makes them worth watching.'
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This, the researchers estimate, amounts to an additional 56,000 children being obese. This is likely to be due to changes in eating behaviour and physical activity that occurred in many countries during the pandemic and have perhaps continued. In the long term, this could cost UK society an estimated £8.7bn, the researchers say. But while the pandemic led to a sudden shock to children's lives and education, it also exacerbated trends that were already taking place prior to the appearance of Covid-19. Judith Perrigo, an education researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, had been watching scores in reading and maths slowly decline in the US for years. Perrigo leads a long-term study of kindergarteners that has been going on for 14 years. The study asks their teachers to give a score on each student's physical health and well-being; social competence; emotional maturity; language and cognitive development; and communication and general knowledge. But she and her colleagues found that the pandemic led to an even sharper drop in language, cognitive and social competence skills. The study was unique in that the researchers had been collecting the same data for over a decade, allowing them to see the impact of a universal shock like Covid-19 over the population and over time. "The story is that the Covid pandemic hurt children developmentally," she says, although she says her study shows the downward trajectory was already underway when it hit. Perrigo and her colleagues expected to see declines in all areas the teachers were assessing, but instead, they found that three out of the five dropped – language and cognitive skills, communication skills and social competence. Physical health stayed the same – possibly because there was so much emphasis on public health during the time that it made it easier to stay healthy, or the time at home during the first lockdowns saw children spend more time outdoors when they were allowed. Perhaps surprisingly, the researchers also saw children's scores for emotional maturity improved during the pandemic. While that may seem counterintuitive at first, Perrigo says, there is a body of research that connects the threads between adversity and emotional maturity. "When children experience adversities, this could be parental divorce, it can be neighborhood violence, they experience emotional maturity that comes along with those adversities," she says. "During Covid, there was nowhere to go. The news was on. We saw fatality counts every day. Children were exposed to a lot of big, complicated topics. And so their emotional maturity scores actually increased." Whether this will help better equip this generation for the trials they face later in life remains to be seen. 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"We hope that some of what we find isn't just applicable in case there's another pandemic, but also speaks to limited social opportunities of different kinds," including growing up as part of groups that may be isolated for cultural or other reasons, says Henry. "So there's a sort of a breadth, as well as a longitudinal viewpoint there." UCLA's Perrigo warns that more aid is needed to help young people – around the world – who have faced such an abrupt change to their lives. Unless policy makers, parents and teachers start to concentrate efforts and use approaches shown by science to improve wellbeing, the trends will continue to worsen over time, she says. "Those trajectories are very clear – they are all going down, and they have been going down for some time," she says. "So I think that there's no reason to believe that those are going to improve on their own in the next five years, in the next decade, unless we do things in a concentrated fashion to make sure that those things do improve." The full implications of the Covid-19 pandemic for a generation of children will only be realised as they play out in the years and decades to come. But for pre-school teacher Rebekah Underwood, she's seeing signs of hope with her latest class. They jump, roll and enjoy music lessons far more than their peers a year or two ago. "It's on the upswing for sure," she says. "They are more adventurous, although the social-emotional development is a little tricky." -- For trusted insights into better health and wellbeing rooted in science, sign up to the Health Fix newsletter, while The Essential List delivers a handpicked selection of features and insights. 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