While the world grapples with the Covid-19 pandemic, there’s now talk about NeoCoV. So far, there have been no cases of people being infected by NeoCoV, but scientists are urging more research to establish if it can infect humans or not. Here’s what you need to know.
According to scientists from the Wuhan University in China, NeoCov can penetrate human cells in the same way as SARS-CoV-2
NeoCoV is “A Biosafety threat with high fatality & transmission rate that cannot be cross-neutralized by antibodies like other variants”
The WHO has said that whether NeoCov coronavirus, reportedly found among bats in SouthAfrica, poses a threat to humans requires further study.
A report, on the Russian website Sputnik, claimed that the high mortality rate of MERS could lead to “one in three infected people dying on average.” “Our study demonstrates the first case of ACE2 usage in MERS-related viruses, shedding light on a potential bio-safety threat of the human emergence of an ACE2 using ‘MERS-CoV-2’ with both high fatality and transmission rate,” the paper said.
“Experts from the Vector research centre are aware of the data that Chinese researchers obtained regarding NeoCov coronavirus. At this time, it’s not about the emergence of a new coronavirus capable of actively spreading among humans,” Vector Russian State Research Centre of Virology and Biotechnology said in a statement.