Novel coronavirus found in UK bats
Posted: Tue May 11, 2021 8:08 pm
This is interesting, rather than immediately worrying:
Preprint: https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-358285/v1
Also nice to see a profile of the (female, undergraduate) student whose project this was, in the press release above.
For me the key point is just how widespread are pathogens with potential to mutate or recombine into something really nasty, even in comparatively well-sampled places like England. The tropics must be absolutely heaving with unidentified dodgy viruses. It would be really handy, in terms of minimising future pandemic risk, if we could minimise the frequency with which people and livestock are exposed to them.
A coronavirus related to the virus that causes Covid-19 in humans has been found in UK horseshoe bats – according to new collaborative research from the University of East Anglia, ZSL (Zoological Society of London), and Public Health England (PHE).
However, there is no evidence that this novel virus has been transmitted to humans, or that it could in future, unless it mutates.
UEA researchers collected faecal samples from more than 50 lesser horseshoe bats in Somerset, Gloucestershire and Wales and sent them for viral analysis at Public Health England.
Genome sequencing found a novel coronavirus in one of the bat samples, which the team have named ‘RhGB01’.
Due to the rapid response nature of this research, it has not yet been peer reviewed.
It is the first time that a sarbecovirus (SARS-related coronavirus) has been found in a lesser horseshoe bat and the first to be discovered in the UK.
The research team say that these bats will almost certainly have harboured the virus for a very long time. And it has been found now, because this is the first time that they have been tested.
Press release: https://www.uea.ac.uk/news/-/article/no ... itish-batsProf Andrew Cunningham, from the Zoological Society of London, said: “Our findings highlight that the natural distribution of sarbecoviruses and opportunities for recombination through intermediate host co-infection have been underestimated.
“This UK virus is not a threat to humans because the receptor binding domain (RBD) – the part of the virus that attaches to host cells to infect them - is not compatible with being able to infect human cells.
“But the problem is that any bat harbouring a SARS-like coronavirus can act as a melting pot for virus mutation. So if a bat with the RhGB01 infection we found were to become infected with SARS-CoV-2, there is a risk that these viruses would hybridise and a new virus emerge with the RBD of SARS-CoV-2, and so be able to infect people.
“Preventing transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from humans to bats, and hence reducing opportunities for virus mutation, is critical with the current global mass vaccination campaign against this virus.”
Preprint: https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-358285/v1
Also nice to see a profile of the (female, undergraduate) student whose project this was, in the press release above.
For me the key point is just how widespread are pathogens with potential to mutate or recombine into something really nasty, even in comparatively well-sampled places like England. The tropics must be absolutely heaving with unidentified dodgy viruses. It would be really handy, in terms of minimising future pandemic risk, if we could minimise the frequency with which people and livestock are exposed to them.