Hidayatullah.com—A virus similar to Covid-19 has been detected in bats in southern China. Medical experts have expressed fears that the virus could infect humans.
Chinese and Australian scientists took samples from 149 bats in China’s Yunnan province, bordering Laos and Myanmar, and identified five viruses “probably pathogenic to humans or livestock”. Among these is the bat coronavirus closely related to Sars-Cov-2 and Sars.
“This means that a Sars-Cov-2-like virus is still circulating in Chinese bats and poses an ongoing risk of emergence,” said Prof. Eddie Holmes, an evolutionary biologist and virologist at the University of Sydney and one of the report’s authors.
The virus known as BtSY2 is related to acute respiratory syndrome 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which is the cause of the Covid-19 pandemic and has killed more than six million people worldwide after it “breakout” in China in 2019.
The new virus is one of five “viruses of concern” found in bats in Yunnan province and is likely to be pathogenic to humans or livestock, the scientists said.
The research was conducted by scientists and experts from Sun Yat-sen University in Shenzhen, the Yunnan Institute for Endemic Disease Control and the University of Sydney and is detailed in recently published research. “We have identified five species of viruses that are potentially pathogenic to humans or livestock, including a combination of SARS-like coronaviruses that are closely related to SARS-CoV-2 and 50 SARS-CoVs,” the team of scientists explained in the study. , reported . Daily mail Ahad (27/11/2022).
“Our study sheds light on the common occurrences of interspecies transmission and co-infection of bat viruses and the implications for virus emergence,” the paper says.
Yunnan province has been identified as a hotbed of bat species and animal-borne viruses. Covid-19 first appeared in the Chinese province of Wuhan, where the first case was identified in December 2019 and quickly spread worldwide becoming a pandemic.*
Representative: Ahmad
Publisher: Insan Kamil
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