{"id":163680,"date":"2025-06-06T19:04:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-06T19:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/163680\/"},"modified":"2025-06-06T19:04:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-06T19:04:09","slug":"new-virus-in-china-one-step-away-from-triggering-next-global-pandemic-world-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/163680\/","title":{"rendered":"New virus in China \u2018one step away\u2019 from triggering next global pandemic | World | News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scientists have warned that a new dangerous coronavirus discovered in China<\/a> could spark the next pandemic. The new HKU5-CoV-2 virus is just one “small” mutation away from being able to spread to humans and cause deadly infections that could kill many people.<\/p>\n

The pathogen is closely related to MERS<\/a>, a lethal virus that kills up to a third of those infected. HKU5-CoV-2 was first documented by the Chinese lab<\/a>, suspected of leaking Covid<\/a> into the environment and sparking the 2020 pandemic.<\/p>\n

Researchers at Washington State University carried out a series of lab experiments to see how the new virus interacts with human cells.<\/p>\n

Professor Michael Letko, a virologist co-lead on the study, said: “HKU5 viruses in particular really hadn’t been looked at much, but our study shows how these viruses infect cells.<\/p>\n

“What we also found is HKU5 viruses may be only a small step away from being able to spill over into humans.”<\/p>\n

The experiments revealed that a small change in the virus’s spike protein could enable it to bind to human ACE2 cells, which are found in people’s throats, mouths and noses.<\/p>\n

The HKU5-CoV-2 strain was collected from a small subset of hundreds of bats swabbed across southern and eastern regions of China.<\/p>\n

At the moment, the virus spreads only among bats, but experts fear that unregulated wildlife trade in China raises the risk the it could mutate into a form that can then spread easily among humans.<\/p>\n

Professor Letko added that the similarity between MERS and HKU5-CoV-2 was cause for some concern.<\/p>\n

“While there’s no evidence they’ve crossed into people yet, the potential is there and that makes them worth watching,” he said.<\/p>\n

MERS made its appearance in 2012 and has affected several countries, primarily in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

Most patients develop symptoms approximately five days after an exposure to an infected person or camel, but the incubation period can range from 2-14 days.<\/p>\n

In hospitalised MERS patients, the median time from the onset of symptoms to a person’s hospitalisation is approximately 4 days.<\/p>\n

From April 2012 to date, a total of 2626 lab-confirmed cases of MERS were reported globally, with 947 associated deaths at a case-fatality ratio (CFR) of 36% – according to WHO.<\/p>\n

The majority of these cases were reported from Saudi Arabia, with 2217 cases and 866 related deaths (CFR: 39%).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists have warned that a new dangerous coronavirus discovered in China could spark the next pandemic. The new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":163681,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[67116,1395,1433,2342,105,4327,68687,3912,68688,2887,16,15,13417],"class_list":{"0":"post-163680","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-bats","9":"tag-china","10":"tag-coronavirus","11":"tag-disease","12":"tag-health","13":"tag-health-section","14":"tag-hku5-cov-2","15":"tag-medicine","16":"tag-mers","17":"tag-pandemic","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom","20":"tag-who"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114637981147061991","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}