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A new type of coronavirus threatens to jump from animals to humans, causing an entirely new pandemic. Scientists warn about that. It concerns Khosta-2 that was already found in bats in Russia in 2020, but did not seem very dangerous at the time. That turns out to be the case. The virus is immune to existing vaccines.
The virus was first discovered in horseshoe bats in Russia’s Sochi National Park. The same bat species is found throughout the European continent and in North Africa. Two variants of the virus called Khosta-1 and Khosta-2 were found in the animals in 2020. Both viruses were not closely related to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. The researchers initially thought that the new viruses lacked a certain gene package that is essential to pose a threat to the human immune system.
After further research, this does not seem to be the case with the Khosta-2 variant. It is now clear that, as with SARS-CoV-2, the new virus has the same so-called spike proteins that can infect human cells in the same way as corona. Most troubling, however, is that the new virus appears to be resistant to any existing vaccine. The scientists also do not rule out the possibility that someone could become infected with both SARS-CoV-2 and Khosta-2, which could lead to the formation of a completely new virus.