Just when you thought the world had learned its lesson from the COVID-19 catastrophe, Chinese scientists have been busy in their labs—again—studying yet another bat coronavirus capable of infecting humans.
And guess who’s leading the charge? None other than Shi Zhengli, the infamous “Batwoman” of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the same institution at the center of the lab-leak theory that global elites have tried to bury.
According to a report from the South China Morning Post, the virus—dubbed HKU5-CoV-2—was identified by none other than Shi Zhengli, the infamous “Batwoman” of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). Shi, whose lab has been at the center of theories regarding the origins of COVID-19, led a study alongside researchers from the Guangzhou Laboratory, the Guangzhou Academy of Sciences, and Wuhan University.
The newly discovered virus, a variant of the HKU5 coronavirus first found in Japanese pipistrelle bats in Hong Kong, reportedly has the ability to bind to the human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor—the same receptor that SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, uses to enter human cells.
The study, published in Cell Press, details how HKU5-CoV-2, part of the merbecovirus subgenus that includes the deadly Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), has an alarming ability to infect human cells. Structural and functional analyses indicate that HKU5-CoV-2 binds to human ACE2 more efficiently than its predecessor, HKU5-CoV-1.
The virus was successfully isolated and confirmed to infect human ACE2-expressing cells, as well as human respiratory and enteric organoids. In layman’s terms: this virus, which originated in bats, is now proven capable of infecting human tissues.
Hellbound and Down 