Five years after SARS-CoV-2 triggered a worldwide pandemic, leading to widespread devastation, another bat-borne coronavirus HKU5-CoV-2 - a distant cousin of Covid-19 has been discovered in China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology. It has caused concern as the new bat coronavirus is capable of binding to the ACE2 reception in human cells, the same pathway, the Covid-19 virus used to infect humans.
HKU5-CoV-2, belonging to the merbecovirus subgenus, includes the MERS virus. The findings of the study published in the journal Cell found that HKU5-CoV-2 could infect human cells in laboratory settings and highlighted its potential to jump species. It can also bind to ACE2 receptors in a variety of mammals, which means multiple intermediate hosts could facilitate its transmission to humans.
