What Doctors Say About the New Bat Coronavirus Discovered in China

Yahoo

27-02-2025

A new coronavirus has just been detected in bats.
Lab tests show the virus can infect human cells, but experts say not to be concerned.
Here's everything we know so far.
Given everything that happened with the COVID-19 pandemic, it's understandable to feel nervous when you hear about a new virus. Now, reports are swirling about a new coronavirus detected in bats called HKU5-CoV-2, and people have questions.
The information comes courtesy of a scientific article published in the journal Cell. The study, which was done by scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, details a newly-detected type of coronavirus in bats that can get into human cells in the same way as SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The researchers wrote in the conclusion that the findings 'underscore' the potential risk of this virus jumping from animals to humans.
Meet the experts: William Schaffner, M.D., is an infectious disease specialist and professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine; Amesh A. Adalja, M.D., is a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security
The CDC tells Prevention, 'CDC is aware of a publication about a new bat coronavirus, but there is no reason to believe it currently poses a concern to public health. The publication referenced demonstrates that the bat virus can use a human protein to enter cells in the laboratory, but they have not detected infections in humans. CDC will continue to monitor viral disease activity and provide important updates to the public.'
Infectious disease doctors also stress that the study doesn't mean another pandemic is looming. Still, it's normal to be concerned. Here's what we know about the bat coronavirus HKU5-CoV-2.
HKU5-CoV-2 is a form of coronavirus that was just detected in bats. The recent study picked up the virus after analyzing anal swabs taken from a certain type of bat from the genus Pipistrellus.
This coronavirus is in the same family as Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), a severe and deadly respiratory virus.
The researchers discovered in a lab experiment that, just like SARS-CoV-2, HKU5-CoV-2 can get into human cells through the ACE2 receptor protein. But the scientists also found that common anti-viral medications that fight SARS-CoV-2 also seem to work against the bat coronavirus.
Technically, yes. But the researchers point out in the study that HKU5-CoV-2 doesn't seem to infect human cells as well as SARS-CoV-2. This bat coronavirus also hasn't been detected in humans—lab tests just found it has the potential to infect people.
That doesn't mean that people will get HKU5-CoV-2, though. 'There are countless numbers of different coronavirus in different species of animals, particularly bats, that will never spill into humans,' says Amesh A. Adalja, M.D., a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
William Schaffner, M.D., an infectious disease specialist and professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, agrees. 'Just because this virus is out there in bats does not mean that it is inevitable that it will become a human virus,' he says. 'This is just another bat virus that's been found.'
There are a few different ways people can get viruses from bats, Dr. Schaffner says. Those include being bitten by a bat, coming into contact with bat droppings, or eating bats.
'Sometimes the virus goes from the bats to another animal and then to humans,' Dr. Schaffner says. 'MERS went from bats to camels to humans. COVID went from bats to pangolins [a type of anteater] to humans.'
Infectious disease doctors say there's no need to panic. 'With viruses, the more you look, the more you'll find,' Dr. Schaffner says. 'There are many viruses out there in the animal population that have not yet been identified.' He says it's likely that HKU5-CoV-2 has been swirling in bats for a while, but was only just now detected. 'It hasn't jumped species yet,' Dr. Schaffner says. 'We've just now identified it, but it's probably been there for years and years.'
Dr. Adalja also says that there's 'no specific concern' about HKU5-CoV-2 causing a pandemic. 'The coronavirus family of viruses is one that is obviously pandemic-capable, but there is no imminent pandemic threat of HKU-5 as it is not infecting humans,' he says.
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