Recent Virus Research Should Raise Alarm

There’s a central question that many scientists face: How can scientific discoveries drive humanity’s progress without posing a dire risk to it? As virus experts, we’re committed to research that uncovers pandemic threats and helps protect people from them. But we are concerned about how some scientists are experimenting with viruses in ways that could put all of us in harm’s way.

In a study published in the scientific journal Cell, a group of researchers reported the discovery of a coronavirus in bats that has the potential to spread to humans.

In a series of experiments, the scientists show that this virus, HKU5-CoV-2, can efficiently infect cells of humans and a wide range of other animal cells. The findings raise the possibility that humans and other animals could be infected by this virus. This coronavirus belongs to a subgroup of viruses that are classified alongside the one that causes MERS and that can have fatality rates far higher than that of the virus that caused the Covid pandemic.