The Covid-19 pandemic, which gripped the world since 2020, may not end anytime soon. While the researchers were able to come up with vaccines to battle the disease, there have been struggles of containing the virus, especially with emergence of new variants.
Shi Zhengli, popularly known as China’s ‘batwoman’ for her research on animal originating viruses, has warned about a new coronavirus that has the potential to emerge in the near future. Shi emphasised the need for increased worldwide preparedness to fight these epidemics, learning from the tragic Covid-19 pandemic.
Shi is the director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and has studied coronaviruses for over 20 years. She has also been nicknamed as ‘Batwoman’.
Shi and her colleagues evaluated the human spillover risk of 40 coronavirus species and half of them were rated “highly risky”. They published a paper at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in July 2023 which was later mentioned in a report in the South China Morning Post.
Out of those 40 species of coronavirus, six have already caused diseases that have infected humans, and other three have infected other animal species.
The study warns of a future disease emergence that is certain and has high chances of being a coronavirus disease again. An analysis of viral traits sucht that of population, genetic diversity, host species and any previous history of zoonosis was the basis of Shi’s study. Important hosts of the pathogen were also identified by the researchers. These hosts included natural hosts such as bats and rodents.
Quick and sensitive testing tools were also developed so that active monitoring could be done of these high-risk viruses.
The SCMP report mentions that this month the research paper by Shi got a lot of attention on Chinese social media. It was also around this time that the US federal agency decided to ban funding for WIV for the next 10 years. Some US officials accuse the Wuhan Institute of Virology of having conducted risky gain-to-function experiments on coronaviruses in bat. They also suggested that the pandemic that hit the world in 2020 was leaked out of the Chinese lab. However, there was no undeniable evidence which could support the lab-leak theory, said the US intelligence documents.
The Covid-19 pandemic claimed lives of more than 4.5 million people and has infected more than 230 million people all over the world. Shi’s warning has come at a time when the world is still struggling to contain the virus.
