Experts have warned that bats in Britain carry a Covid-like virus that can be transmitted to humans.
The unprecedented coronavirus only needed a few “adaptations” to pose a threat to humans, according to a team of researchers that included a prominent government adviser.
The pathogen, named RhGB07, was one of two new viruses discovered by scientists hunting bats.
But another element, which also belongs to the same “Covid” family, did not show any signs of its ability to transmit the infection to humans.
The scientists insisted that the risk that RhGB07 poses to society is small.
Some believe that Covid passed to humans from bats in China, probably via intermediate species such as the raccoon dog or the pangolin.
There is growing concern about zoonotic diseases that can be transmitted from animals to humans and their potential to cause epidemics.
Some experts have cited climate change and increased urbanization leading to habitat loss and thus increased movement of animals due to environmental devastation as some of the factors that may contribute to zoonotic diseases.
British and Swiss scientists working on the new study said their discovery demonstrated the importance of monitoring and testing wildlife populations for viruses.
Such programs are touted as one of the few lines of defense against zoonotic outbreaks, giving scientists an edge in determining which pathogens could cause a pandemic.
The locations where samples of the infected bats were taken have not been released.
Despite writing in a previous post published on Biorxiv, the team named three hotspots where bat species tend to mix.
These were areas near Bristol, Birmingham and Brighton.
The research team also included Professor Wendy Barclay from Imperial College London, who is a member of SAGE, the disease expert panel that led No10 during the Covid pandemic.
In the main part of the study, fecal samples from 16 species of bats found in the UK were tested for the presence of viruses.
Laboratory analysis identified nine viruses, two of which are completely new to science.
They have been found in specimens taken from large and small horseshoe bats, with viruses identified as RhGB07 and RfGB02.
These viruses belong to the same family of pathogens as the Covid virus, SARS-CoV-2.
The scientists, who came from institutions such as University College London, the Francis Crick Institute and Imperial College London, tested the viruses for their ability to infect human cells.
They found that only RhGB07 had the ability to bind to a protein normally found on the surface of human cells.
But the team ruled out that doing so is “suboptimal.”
For comparison, the scientists said that the binding capacity of the spike protein RhGB07, which is part of the virus that infects cells, to the ACE-2 receptor was “17 times less” than that of Covid.
Covid itself is believed to have become more contagious than measles.
However, they note that studies of similar bat viruses have shown that even a single mutation can significantly increase this ability.
Further analysis of the spiked RhGB07 protein showed that this is far from the only mutation associated with the development of the cleavage site found in the COVID-19 virus.
Some studies attribute this structure to enhancing Covid’s ability to infect humans.
Scientists even mutated the virus to make this change artificially, but they insist that there was no danger to humans from this experiment.
Professor François Balloux, an infectious disease expert at University College London and author of the study, said he had not established a “functional” site for mitosis.
By tweeting, Professor Ballu tried to stave off accusations that the team was engaged in controversial “feature acquisition” research.
And in this area of science, experts could endow viruses with new abilities that could make them more dangerous to humans.
He said: “None of the experiments were dangerous in any sense. We did not use any live viruses. All laboratory experiments were carried out on absolutely safe “pseudoviruses”.
Pseudoviruses are created artificially for laboratory experiments, which allows scientists to add parts of real viruses, such as spike proteins, to them.
However, they can only infect cells once, which means they cannot infect humans in the same way as real viruses.
In their final analysis, the scientists also found that the new viruses show the ability to recombine with other viruses.
They said this ability could theoretically speed up its adaptation to infecting new hosts, such as when hypothetically co-infected with someone who already has Covid.
“Therefore, the possibility of future human transmission of the virus cannot be ruled out, even if the risk is low,” they wrote.
They added: “Given the current health burden posed by coronaviruses and the risks they pose as potential agents of future pandemics, monitoring animal-borne coronaviruses should be a public health priority.”
The scientists also said that while the risk of human infection with the bat virus was low, their results showed that researchers and wildlife professionals working with mammals must adhere to strict biosecurity guidelines.
“Bats play important roles in ecosystems around the world, including services such as arthropod suppression, pollination and seed dispersal,” they said.
Recent studies have shown that human stressors such as habitat loss and land-use change may be important factors in the spread of zoonotic diseases in wildlife, and that bat culling is not effective in reducing transmission between species.
Thus, an integrated conservation approach that includes maintaining legal protection rather than destroying wildlife and their habitats is critical to the future approach to reducing the risks of zoonotic diseases. All bats in the UK, including their resting places, are legally protected, four species are critically endangered and two others are considered endangered.
People who intentionally kill or injure bats or destroy their resting or breeding grounds face up to six months in prison and an unlimited fine.
Source: Daily Mail
