Ebola, Zika now WIV1-CoV,

Researchers from the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill have found that the newly identified virus, known as WIV1-CoV, a SARS-like virus found in Chinese horseshoe bats may be poised to infect humans could bind to the same receptors as SARS-CoV that infected thousands in 2002.They also showed that the virus readily and efficiently replicated in cultured human airway tissues, suggesting an ability to jump directly to humans. Researcher Vineet Menachery said that the capacity of this group of viruses to jump into humans is greater than originally thought, adding that while other adaptations may be required to produce an epidemic, several viral strains circulating in bat populations have already overcome the barrier of replication in human cells and suggest reemergence as a distinct possibility. He further said that this virus may never jump to humans, but if it does, WIV1-CoV has the potential to seed a new outbreak with significant consequences for both public health and the global economy.The research team also found that antibodies developed to treat SARS were effective in both human and animal tissue samples against WIV1-CoV, providing a potent treatment option if there were an outbreak. Prevention using existing vaccines against SARS would not provide protection for this new virus due to slight differences in the viral sequence and there is a limitation to treat with antibodies.This is the same as with ZMapp, the antibody approach used for Ebola, because of production at a large enough scale to treat many people. culled from journal of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.