As the world struggles with many variants of Covid-19, a new study by Chinese researchers has found that NeoCoV, a type of coronavirus that spreads among bats in South Africa, could pose a threat to humans in the future if further modified.


 

The results of an in-peer-reviewed study conducted by researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Wuhan University have triggered an alarm around the world and the online space has been filled with gossip around NeoCoV. In India, "NeoCov" became the top search term with more than five lakh searches as of Friday, according to Google.

Read this also: Wuhan Scientists have discovered the NeoCov Covid Variant, which is the mostdangerous of all Covid related viruses.

In view of the alarm, the World Health Organization (WHO) released a statement on Friday stating that it is aware of the development and that further study is needed to determine if the virus is endangering humans.

What is NeoCov? And where they discovered:

NeoCov is a virus variant linked to Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), one of the seven known known coronaviruses that can infect humans. Several MERS-CoV cases were reported in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and South Korea at the beginning of the last decade. According to the WHO, the MERS-CoV infection death rate is 35 percent.

Experts say NeoCov is not a new virus and was discovered in 2013 in bats in South Africa while searching for the ancestor of MERS-CoV. They said NeoCoV had not yet been infected by humans.

What is the research saying?

The research paper states that NeoCoV has so far only been found in bats and can only infect humans when exposed to a specific variant of the virus (T510F) mutation.

"In this study, we unexpectedly discovered that NeoCoV and its close relative, PDF-2180-CoV, could use human ACE2 more efficiently and less favorably to penetrate certain types of angioplasty-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2)," the authors said. Therefore, NeoCoV should not be an immediate concern.

 (This information taken from website feed)