Covid-like virus is found lurking in UK bats

Bats in Britain are harboring a Covid-like virus that has the potential to spill over to humans, experts warn.

The never-before-seen coronavirus would need just a few “adaptations” to pose a threat to humans, the team of researchers, including a prominent government adviser, said.

The pathogen, dubbed RhGB07, was one of two new viruses unearthed by bat-hunting scientists.

But the other, also from the same family as Covid, showed no signs of infecting humans.

Academics emphasized that the risk to society from RhGB07 was small.

Professor Francois Balloux, an infectious disease expert at University College London, said no bats were injured during the study and experiments on the virus were safe

The study was also co-authored by Imperial College London’s Professor Wendy Barclay, an infectious disease expert and member of SAGE, the panel of experts that has guided No10 through the Covid pandemic.

Some believe Covid jumped from bats in China to humans — possibly via an intermediate species such as raccoon dog or pangolin.

Concerns are growing about zoonotic diseases, which can spread from animals to humans, and their potential to cause pandemics.

Some experts have pointed to climate change and increasing urbanization leading to habitat loss, and thus increased animal movement through environmental destruction, as some of the factors that may contribute to zoonoses.

British and Swiss scientists working on the new study said their work discovery showed the importance of monitoring and testing wild animal populations for viruses.

Such programs are touted as one of the few lines of defense against zoonotic outbreaks that give scientists an edge in identifying pathogens with pandemic potential.

Locations where samples of the infected bats were taken are not shared.

Although, writing in a pre-print posted on Biorxivthe team named three hotspots where bat species often mix.

These were areas near Bristol, Birmingham and Brighton.

The team of researchers also included Imperial College London’s Professor Wendy Barclay, a member of SAGE, the panel of disease experts that guided No10 through the Covid pandemic.

The bulk of the study screened faecal samples from 16 bat species living in the UK for viruses.

Laboratory analysis revealed nine viruses, two of which were completely new to science.

These were found in samples collected from the Greater and Lesser Horseshoe Bat, containing the viruses RhGB07 and RfGB02.

These viruses belong to the same broad family of pathogens as the Covid virus, SARS-CoV-2.

The scientists, who come from University College London, The Francis Crick Institute and Imperial College London, among others, then tested the two viruses for their ability to infect human cells.

They found that only RhGB07 had the potential to bind to a protein commonly found on the surface of human cells.

But it could only do this “sub-optimally,” the team judged.

In comparison, the scientists said the binding ability of the spike protein of RhGB07, the part of the virus that infects cells, to the ACE-2 receptor was “17 times lower” than Covid’s.

Covid itself is believed to have evolved to be even more contagious than measles.

However, they noted that studies on similar bat viruses had shown that even a single mutation can vastly increase that ability.

Further analysis of the RhGB07 spike protein also found it to be just one mutation away from developing the furin cleavage site found on the Covid virus.

The scientists said their study showed the importance of monitoring UK bat populations for possible zoonotic diseases and that people working with the mammals should follow biosecurity measures. Pictured a brown long-eared bat in Sussex

All bat species in the UK are protected by law and people who deliberately hurt them or damage their nests could face fines and even jail time. Pictured is a British bat species, the Common Pipistrelle

Professor Francois Balloux, an infectious disease expert at University College London and an author of the study, said the study did not harm bats and the experiments did not pose any danger to humans

Some studies have credited this structure as improving Covid’s ability to infect humans.

Scientists have even mutated the virus to artificially bring about this change — but maintain that this experiment poses no danger to the public.

Professor Francois Balloux, an infectious disease expert at University College London and an author of the study, said it did not create a ‘functional’ furin cleavage site.

Writing on Twitter, Professor Balloux sought to avoid allegations that the team was involved in controversial ‘gain-of-function’ research.

In this field of science, experts can give viruses new abilities that can make them more dangerous to humans.

“None of the experiments were dangerous in any way. We didn’t use a live virus. All lab experiments were done with completely safe “pseudoviruses,” he said.

Pseudoviruses are artificially created for lab experiments, allowing scientists to add parts of real viruses, such as spike proteins, to them.

However, they can only infect cells once, meaning they cannot infect humans in the same way real viruses can.

In their final analysis, the scientists also found that the new viruses exhibit the ability to recombine with other viruses.

They said this ability could, in theory, accelerate their adaptation to infect new hosts, for example in a hypothetical co-infection with a person already infected with Covid.

“As such, the possibility of a future host jump to humans cannot be ruled out, even if the risk is small,” they wrote.

They added: “Given the current health burden exerted by coronaviruses and the risk they pose as potential causative agents of future epidemics and pandemics, surveillance of animal-borne coronaviruses should be a public health priority.”

The scientists also said that while the risk of a general member of the public contracting bat virus was low, their findings emphasized that researchers and wildlife workers working with the mammals must follow strict biosecurity practices.

‘Bats perform important roles in ecosystems worldwide, including services such as arthropod suppression, pollination and seed dispersal,” they said.

‘Recent studies have shown that human-induced stressors, such as habitat loss and land-use change, may be major drivers of zoonotic overflow in wildlife, and that bat culling is ineffective in minimizing transmission between bats and bats. species.

‘As such, it is vital that an integrated approach to ecological conservation is adopted, where the preservation of legal protection, rather than the destruction of wildlife and its habitat, is incorporated into future approaches to mitigating zoonosis risks.’

All bats in the UK, including their roosting sites, are protected by law, with four species threatened with extinction, and two others listed as endangered.

People who deliberately kill or injure bats or destroy their resting or breeding grounds can be jailed for six months and fined indefinitely.

Bats in Asia are considered one of the possible origins of the original Covid virus, although some scientists believe it was subsequently modified through experimentation by Chinese scientists at the now-infamous laboratory of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.