Report from Tribunnews.com Journalist, Fitri Wulandari
TRIBUNNEWS.COM – Scientists from Shandong First Medical University and Shandong Academy of Medical Sciences in the city of Taian, China, discovered a new virus called ‘RpYN06’.
The virus is called identical ‘94.5 percent ‘to SARS-CoV-2 which causes the corona virus (Covid-19).
In their stern warning, the Chinese researchers said that the RpYN06 found in bats, is the disease closest to Covid-19, because it has a similar spike protein.
Spike proteins are structures outside the virus that are used to bind to human cells.
Quoted from the express.co.uk page, Sunday (14/3/2021), Shandong scientists examined 411 samples that had been collected from 23 species of bats in China’s Yunnan province during the period 2019 to 2020, and found four viruses related to SARS-CoV- 2.
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Apart from RpYN06, it is written in their paper that ‘the other three SARS-CoV-2-related coronaviruses are almost identical in sequence’.
The team of scientists led by Weifeng Shi then added that the SARS-CoV-2 relative virus is circulating in wildlife species in large geographic areas in Southeast Asia and southern China.
They emphasized that the findings not only highlight the enormous diversity of bat viruses, but also warn that further surveillance efforts on wild animals are essential.
“It is important that further surveillance efforts should cover the wider range of wild animals in the region, to help track the ongoing animal-to-human spread of the virus,” the paper noted.
This statement follows what has been said by Virologist Chris van Tulleken, who warned that other viral pandemics could be more deadly than the current Covid-19 epidemic.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today program, he said animal-to-human transmission of the virus would be more frequent than ever before.
“It is not a question of whether the next viral pandemic will have a spike, but it is a question of ‘when’ that more deadly virus will spread. And of course maybe we will imagine a pandemic that will be much more severe in some aspects, when compared to our current experience. , “said van Tulleken.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has previously warned that more diseases like Covid-19 are about to emerge.
They call the emerging disease the type “that can pass from animals to humans” and call it a threat “Disease X”.
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