{"id":36485,"date":"2022-10-02T13:41:46","date_gmt":"2022-10-02T20:41:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/?p=36485"},"modified":"2022-10-02T13:41:46","modified_gmt":"2022-10-02T20:41:46","slug":"russian-bat-virus-could-spark-the-next-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/russian-bat-virus-could-spark-the-next-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"Russian Bat Virus Could Spark the Next Pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/scientists-identify-molecule-that-can-kill-covid-with-hugs-but-theres-a-catch\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">COVID-19 pandemic&nbsp;<\/a>isn\u2019t over. In fact, it shows signs of lingering for, well,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/scientists-warn-of-spike-in-long-covid-cases-across-the-united-states?ref=author\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><em>a<\/em>&nbsp;<em>long time<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But even as politicians and health authorities struggle with how, if at all, to&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/this-could-be-the-only-way-to-end-the-covid-19-pandemic-for-good\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">keep addressing the&nbsp;<em>current&nbsp;<\/em>pandemic<\/a>, scientists are already anticipating the&nbsp;<em>next&nbsp;<\/em>one. They\u2019re scouring the planet for animal viruses that, like&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/scientists-warn-of-spike-in-long-covid-cases-across-the-united-states\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">SARS-CoV-2<\/a>, could leap to the human population and cause serious disease on a global scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They just found one. And it\u2019s&nbsp;<em>nasty<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2020, a team of Russian scientists collected a few horseshoe bats in Sochi National Park in southern Russia. The Russians identified, in those bats, a new virus they called Khosta-2. Behaviorally, the virus seemed to have a lot in common with SARS-CoV-2. Two years later, a separate team\u2014including scientists from Washington State University and Tulane University\u2014tested Khosta-2 along with another newly-discovered Russian bat virus, hoping to determine whether they\u2019re capable of infecting people. And, if so, whether our antibodies stand any chance of stopping them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The initial results, which the team described in&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/journals.plos.org\/plospathogens\/article\/authors?id=10.1371\/journal.ppat.1010828\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a new peer-reviewed study<\/a>&nbsp;that appeared last week in the science journal&nbsp;<em>PLOS Pathogens<\/em>, are worrying. The second bat virus didn\u2019t seem all that infectious. But Khosta-2, on the other hand, took a liking to human cells.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe tested how well the spike proteins from these bat viruses infect human cells under different conditions,\u201d the scientists wrote. \u201cWe found that the spike from the virus Khosta-2 could infect [the] cells, similar to human pathogens using the same entry mechanisms.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Equally troubling, Khosta-2 proved \u201cresistant to neutralization by serum from individuals who had been vaccinated for SARS-CoV-2.\u201d In other words, our bodies\u2019 defenses against COVID-19 might not protect us from a hypothetical disease caused by Khosta-2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The&nbsp;COVID-19 pandemic&nbsp;isn\u2019t over. In fact, it shows signs of lingering for, well,&nbsp;a&nbsp;long time. But even as politicians and health authorities struggle with how, if at all, to&nbsp;keep addressing the&nbsp;current&nbsp;pandemic, scientists are already anticipating the&nbsp;next&nbsp;one. They\u2019re scouring the planet for animal viruses that, like&nbsp;SARS-CoV-2, could leap to the human population and cause serious disease on a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":754,"featured_media":36486,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[251],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cww7news.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/bat-e1664743290221.jpg?fit=700%2C390&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36485"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/754"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36485"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36487,"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36485\/revisions\/36487"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}