China has discovered another coronavirus that is believed to be potent enough to infect humans. Scientists from the infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology identified the novel strain in bats in conditions eerily similar to the early days of Covid. Only two years after the worst was thought to be over, there are concerns that history may repeat itself, as HKU5-CoV-2 is strikingly similar to the pandemic virus.

The new virus is far more similar to MERS, a highly lethal coronavirus that may kill up to one-third of its victims. Shi Zhengli, known as the ‘Batwoman’ of coronavirus research, led the discovery, which was published in a respected scientific publication. According to testing, HKU5-CoV-2 enters human cells in the same way that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, does.

The Beijing-funded researchers admitted that there was a “high risk of spillover to humans, either through direct transmission or facilitated by intermediate hosts” when they reported their findings in the journal Cell. MERS is a respiratory disease that can spread from humans to animals and vice versa. In extreme cases, it can be fatal and cause fever, coughing, dyspnea, diarrhea, and vomiting.

MERS has previously been found in only two US patients, both of whom tested positive in May 2014 and were linked to Middle Eastern travel. The virus has no known vaccine. The coronavirus HKU5-CoV-2 belongs to the merbecovirus family of viruses. Minks and pangolins, which were considered to act as a conduit for COVID between bats and humans, have been confirmed to carry merbecovirus.

This “suggests frequent cross-species transmission of these viruses between bats and other animal species,” the researchers wrote. They continued: “This study reveals a distinct lineage of HKU5-CoVs in bats that efficiently use human [cells] and underscores their potential zoonotic risk.” However, recent research suggests that HKU5-CoV-2 has a ‘higher potential for interspecies transmission’ than prior HKU5-CoV viruses, which were discovered in bats in 2006.

The possibility of HKU5-CoV-2 spreading to humans, however, “remains to be investigated.” The Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is central to the lab-leak theory—which contends that Covid-19 was created in a Chinese facility and mistakenly released to the public—conducted the study. The most recent study suggests that the Covid-19 pandemic was caused by a zoonotic spillover since bats are coronavirus reservoirs and have the highest concentration of coronaviruses.

However, the US intelligence community has low confidence that Covid leaked from the WIV. According to the current study, while there is evidence of SARS and MERS transmission from animals to humans, the “intermediate hosts for SARS-CoV-2 remain unclear.”