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Wales Online
Wales Online
National
Will Maule

New Russian 'bat virus' could infect humans and resist Covid-19 vaccines, scientists warn

A new virus discovered in Russian horseshoe bats could potentially infect humans and evade Covid-19 vaccines, scientists have warned.

The virus, 'Khosta-2', is categorised as a sarbecovirus – the same type of coronavirus as SARS-CoV-2, which infected more than 600 million people worldwide during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Khosta-2 displays "troubling traits," according to a study in the journal PLoS Pathogens, with a team at Washington State University (WSU) finding that the virus can utilise its spike proteins to infect human cells in a similar fashion to SARS-CoV-2.

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