New Delhi: Scientists in Wuhan have warned of a new variant of coronavirus NeoCov, currently circulating in South Africa. The New strain is reportedly related to the Middle East respiratory syndrome MERS-COV.
According to the Russian news agency – NeoCoV was first found in bats in South Africa has a high death and transmission rate.
However, according to the report, the NeoCov virus is not new. Associated with MERS-CoV virus was discovered in outbreaks in Middle Eastern countries in 2012 and 2015. It is similar to the SARS-CoV-2, which causes coronavirus in humans.
According to researchers from Wuhan University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Biophysics, only one mutation is required for the virus to infiltrate human cells. The research findings stated that the novel coronavirus poses a risk because it binds to the ACE2 receptor differently than the coronavirus pathogen. As a result, neither antibodies nor protein molecules produced by people with respiratory diseases or who have been immunized can protect against NeoCoV.
NeoCoV was discovered in a bat population in South Africa and has only been known to spread among these animals, a new unpeered study published as a preprint on the bioRxiv website discovered that NeoCoV and its close relative PDF-2180-CoV can infect humans.
According to Chinese researchers, NeoCoV carries the potential combination of MERS-high CoV’s mortality rate (one in every three infected persons dies) and the current SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus’s high transmission rate.
(_Vinayak Barot)