MOSCOW, January 27. /TASS/. The danger of the new NeoCov coronavirus discovered in bats in South Africa so far is hard to estimate, Head of the Biotechnology Laboratory of the Gamaleya Center Sergey Alkhovsky said on Thursday.
"This is a rather serious, interesting discovery but it is very difficult to estimate the direct danger of this particular strain. We can state that there is a multitude of these strains circulating in the wild and we need to study this multitude, this genetic diversity, promote research in this area," he said at the meeting of the Scientific Council of the Russian Academy of Sciences entitled Omicron: molecular and biological properties, epidemiology, the prospects of diagnostics and therapy, commenting on the discovery of a new coronavirus.
According to him, in particular, the discovery of this variety shows that the variants of viruses capable of binding to human receptors without any adaptation are already circulating directly in the wild.
Earlier, Chinese scientists discovered that the NeoCov coronavirus found in bats in South Africa is a close relative of the agent causing MERS fever which can penetrate cells in approximately the same way as SARS-CoV-2.