Report: Chinese scientists say new COVID-19 variant ‘NeoCov’ has high mortality rate

A group of Chinese scientists from Wuhan have issued a warning against a new variant of coronavirus named NeoCoV, which is said to be more lethal with a higher infection rate. 

As per a report by the Russian news agency Sputnik, which was published by several media outlets, the NeoCov variant was discovered in South Africa and it is claimed to be related to the respiratory syndrome MERS-COV. 

“Our studies have also demonstrated that current COVID-19 vaccinations are insufficient to protect humans from any and all infections that could be caused by these viruses,” explains the research paper published on the BioRxiv website. Despite the fact that this study has not been peer-reviewed, it was released as a preprint.

The paper states that the extensive mutations found in the RBD regions of the SARS-CoV-2 variants, especially omicron, may indicate that these viruses may carry a latent potential to infect humans through further adaptation through antigenic drift.

At this stage NeoCoV’s ability to infect humans remains a theory. Director of Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology Dr Anurag Agrawal said that MERS was deadlier than Covid but it didn’t result in a pandemic. 

“Not everything that jumps becomes a pandemic”, he said and added that awareness is good but nothing to panic over, contrary to floating headlines.