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Friday, February 28, 2025

NeoCov: What is this virus and should we be worried?

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1113 days ago
20220210
An illustration of a person pulling a piece of cloth off a table to reveal a large COVID virus. [Muaz Kory/Al Jazeera]

An illustration of a person pulling a piece of cloth off a table to reveal a large COVID virus. [Muaz Kory/Al Jazeera]

Doc­tor’s Note by Dr Amir Khan | AL JAZEERA

 

● It is im­por­tant to re­search this coro­n­avirus that can cross from bats to hu­mans, but we must not pan­ic ●

 

(AL JAZEERA) — A type of coro­n­avirus known as Neo­Cov has been mak­ing head­lines around the world, with some com­par­ing it to the SARS-CoV-2 virus which caus­es COVID-19. But that com­par­i­son is not re­al­ly ac­cu­rate, and this is cer­tain­ly not a new vari­ant.

The Neo­Cov virus is the clos­est known ge­net­ic rel­a­tive to the Mid­dle East Res­pi­ra­to­ry Syn­drome (MERS) virus, lead­ing to com­par­isons with the lat­ter’s fa­tal­i­ty rate of one in three in­fect­ed peo­ple – but there is no risk to hu­mans from Neo­Cov yet.

So, what is Neo­Cov and is there cause for con­cern?

SARS-CoV-2, MERS, and Neo­Cov all be­long to a group of virus­es known as coro­n­avirus­es. There are hun­dreds of coro­n­avirus­es, most of which cir­cu­late among an­i­mals such as pigs, camels, bats and cats. Some coro­n­avirus­es can in­fect hu­mans and cause mild cold-like symp­toms. On­ly three coro­n­avirus­es have been known to cause se­ri­ous symp­toms in hu­mans. These are:

Se­vere Acute Res­pi­ra­to­ry Syn­drome (SARS) emerged in 2002 and re­sult­ed in a high­ly con­ta­gious and po­ten­tial­ly life-threat­en­ing form of pneu­mo­nia. It is thought that a strain of the coro­n­avirus usu­al­ly on­ly found in small mam­mals mu­tat­ed, en­abling it to in­fect hu­mans. Due to a pol­i­cy of iso­lat­ing peo­ple sus­pect­ed of hav­ing the con­di­tion and screen­ing all pas­sen­gers trav­el­ling by air, there have been no new cas­es of SARS since 2004.

Mid­dle East Res­pi­ra­to­ry Syn­drome (MERS) was orig­i­nal­ly trans­mit­ted to hu­mans from camels. It was first iden­ti­fied in 2012 and con­tin­ues to cause spo­radic and lo­calised out­breaks. MERS can start with a fever and cough, which can de­vel­op in­to pneu­mo­nia and breath­ing dif­fi­cul­ties.

COVID-19: The SARS-CoV-2 virus caus­es coro­n­avirus dis­ease 2019 (or COVID-19). It was first iden­ti­fied in Chi­na in De­cem­ber 2019 and was de­clared a glob­al pan­dem­ic by the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) on March 11, 2020.

The Neo­Cov virus was first iden­ti­fied in 2011 and found to in­fect a species of bats known as Ne­oromi­cia, which are most­ly found in parts of Africa. Neo­Cov is not known to in­fect hu­mans. How­ev­er, sci­en­tists in Chi­na who have been study­ing it caused wide­spread pan­ic when they sug­gest­ed Neo­Cov may have the po­ten­tial to in­fect hu­mans in the fu­ture.

It is al­ways valu­able to re­search virus­es that have the po­ten­tial to cross be­tween an­i­mals and hu­mans but, in the cur­rent cli­mate, it is vi­tal to not be alarmist about it.

The study shows that Neo­Cov can bind to re­cep­tors on the out­side of bat cells called An­giotensin-con­vert­ing en­zyme 2 (ACE2) re­cep­tors to gain en­try and cause an in­fec­tion. ACE2 is a re­cep­tor pro­tein on lots of dif­fer­ent types of cells that pro­vides an en­try point for coro­n­avirus­es to bind with and gain en­try in­to an or­gan­ism. Al­though ACE2 re­cep­tors oc­cur on hu­man cells too, they are dif­fer­ent to bat ACE2 re­cep­tors and Neo­Cov is un­able to bind with them and in­fect hu­mans.

But the au­thors of the pa­per have sug­gest­ed that with the cor­rect mu­ta­tion, Neo­Cov could po­ten­tial­ly spill over in­to hu­mans. They have gone on to iden­ti­fy the sin­gle mu­ta­tion that would be need­ed on the Neo­Cov re­cep­tor’s bind­ing do­main for it to achieve this spillover event, but on­ly in lab­o­ra­to­ry set­tings. Be­cause of its ge­net­ic sim­i­lar­i­ties to MERS, this led peo­ple to be­lieve if it did in­fect hu­mans, it would have a sim­i­lar fa­tal­i­ty rate of one in three, but all of this is hy­po­thet­i­cal. The re­searchers al­so found that an­ti­bod­ies to ei­ther MERS or COVID-19 would not neu­tralise the Neo­Cov virus.

At present, how­ev­er, there is no need to pan­ic. It is al­ways a good idea to ex­pand our sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge of the thou­sands of coro­n­avirus­es out there and pre­pare our­selves for any po­ten­tial spillover events that might oc­cur be­tween an­i­mals and hu­mans. How­ev­er, cau­tion must be ad­vised as we study an­i­mals, mi­croor­gan­isms and virus­es – we must treat them with the re­spect they de­serve; this is the nat­ur­al world we are deal­ing with and it does not al­ways play by the rules of hu­mans.

An illustration of a child sitting at a small desk with their hands on their cheeks, looking at a large globe covered by injections. There is a large calendar in the background with some days ticked off and some crossed out. [Jawahir Al-Naimi/Al Jazeera]

An illustration of a child sitting at a small desk with their hands on their cheeks, looking at a large globe covered by injections. There is a large calendar in the background with some days ticked off and some crossed out. [Jawahir Al-Naimi/Al Jazeera]

 

Up­date: Child­hood im­mu­ni­sa­tions rates drop dur­ing the pan­dem­ic

 

Child­hood im­mu­ni­sa­tions are one of our biggest pub­lic health suc­cess sto­ries, sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duc­ing the num­bers of chil­dren in­fect­ed by dis­eases like po­lio, ty­phoid and measles world­wide. But the glob­al pan­dem­ic has thwart­ed ef­forts made by health­care pro­fes­sion­als to give these life-sav­ing vac­cines to chil­dren. The WHO re­port­ed that glob­al cov­er­age from all child­hood im­mu­ni­sa­tions dropped from 86 per­cent in 2019 to 83 per­cent in 2020.

An es­ti­mat­ed 23 mil­lion chil­dren un­der the age of one did not re­ceive ba­sic vac­cines, which is the high­est num­ber since 2009, and the num­ber of com­plete­ly un­vac­ci­nat­ed chil­dren in­creased by 3.4 mil­lion.

A study al­so showed that the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic caused a wor­ry­ing de­cline in the up­take in child­hood im­mu­ni­sa­tions across Africa, Asia, North and South Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope, stat­ing that those from dis­ad­van­taged back­grounds and poor­er coun­tries were worst af­fect­ed.

The rea­sons be­hind the de­cline in im­mu­ni­sa­tions are com­plex and will vary from coun­try to coun­try, but there is no doubt the bur­den put on health­care sys­tems dur­ing the pan­dem­ic played a part. While most wealth­i­er coun­tries con­tin­ued to in­vite chil­dren in for rou­tine im­mu­ni­sa­tions, poor­er na­tions strug­gled. Some par­ents may not have deemed it safe to take their child to a health­care set­ting dur­ing a pan­dem­ic for fear of catch­ing the virus. And, of course, an­ti-vaxxers will have used any ad­van­tage they had around the de­bate over COVID-19 vac­cines to flood the in­ter­net with un­found­ed claims about rou­tine child­hood im­mu­ni­sa­tions.

When im­mu­ni­sa­tions do such a good job at erad­i­cat­ing se­ri­ous ill­ness­es, peo­ple of­ten for­get how se­vere these ill­ness­es can be. Measles is a good ex­am­ple – chil­dren are vac­ci­nat­ed against measles in the MMR (measles, mumps, rubel­la) vac­cine. They get two dos­es of the vac­cine, which of­fers 99-per­cent pro­tec­tion against measles.

Measles is an ex­treme­ly con­ta­gious dis­ease – nine out of 10 un­vac­ci­nat­ed chil­dren who are ex­posed to the virus will catch it. It not on­ly caus­es a wide­spread rash and fever in the acute phase of the in­fec­tion but can lead to life-threat­en­ing pneu­mo­nia in chil­dren and cause po­ten­tial­ly fa­tal in­flam­ma­tion of the brain.

For measles to be re­duced to safe lev­els in a pop­u­la­tion we need 95 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion to be vac­ci­nat­ed against it. The re­main­ing five per­cent who have not had the vac­cines should re­al­ly on­ly be made up of peo­ple who can­not have the vac­cines for med­ical rea­sons such as al­ler­gies or se­ri­ous ill­ness. These peo­ple re­ly on the rest of us to get vac­ci­nat­ed to al­low for a pop­u­la­tion to achieve herd im­mu­ni­ty.

When MMR vac­cine rates fall be­low 95 per­cent, this can lead to com­mu­ni­ty out­breaks of measles, putting un­vac­ci­nat­ed and clin­i­cal­ly vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren at risk.

All the vac­cines deemed nec­es­sary in child­hood were de­vel­oped and rec­om­mend­ed be­cause the ill­ness­es they pro­tect against can cause sig­nif­i­cant suf­fer­ing and death among chil­dren and adults. Mil­lions of dos­es of these vac­cines have been giv­en to chil­dren over the years and they are safe. If you have any ques­tions, speak to a health­care pro­fes­sion­al. It is nev­er too late to come for­ward for missed vac­cines; we have “catch up” pro­grammes that mean we can get you ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed no mat­ter which vac­cine you may have missed.

COVID-19Health


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