Is new bat coronavirus a concern to public health? What CDC has said

A new coronavirus HKU5-CoV-2 capable of entering human cells through the same pathway as Covid-19 has been discovered by scientists at China's Wuhan Institute of Virology. While the discovery may spark pandemic concerns, experts assure that the virus has only been found in laboratory studies and that the risk of emergence in the human population is quite low at the moment.
On Monday, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) echoed the same sentiment saying that the new bat coronavirus is currently not a cause for concern. The federal health agency said the virus doesn't pose risk to public health currently and no infection has been found in humans.
"CDC is aware of a publication about a new bat coronavirus, but there is no reason to believe it currently poses a concern to public health," the agency said. "The publication referenced demonstrates that the bat virus can use a human protein to enter cells in the laboratory, but they have not detected infections in humans."
The findings by the Chinese researchers, including from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Guangzhou Medical University, were published in the journal Cell on Friday.
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The newly-found coronavirus HKU5-CoV-2 is a type of merbecovirus, which belongs to the same family of another coronavirus known to infect humans called Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).
In the lab study, the new coronavirus could enter cells through the ACE2 receptor, a protein found on the cells' surface, following the same route as Covid-19 used to infect people. This could mean the new coronavirus could pose a risk to spilling over into humans.
However, the researchers said the virus didn't enter human cells as easily as SARS-CoV-2 which cuts the risk of human spread.

If the virus were to infect humans, researchers suggested that antiviral drugs and monoclonal antibodies—lab-made proteins that replicate the body's natural defense against viruses—could be effective.
While HKU5-CoV-2 uses ACE2 receptors like SARS-CoV-2, its ability to bind to human cells is less. Laboratory tests suggest that the virus can infect human lung tissue, but it lacks the efficiency needed for widespread human transmission. This minimizes risk of outbreak in humans.