Chinese researchers said on Thursday, June 10, that they had found a "bunch of young coronaviruses" in bats, including one that coronavirus that may be genetically very close to the Covid-19 virus.
According to researchers, their findings in a small region of southwest China's Yunnan Province show how many coronaviruses there are in bats and how many of them have the potential to spread to humans.
Weifeng Shi of Shandong University and his colleagues collected bat specimens between May 2019 and November 2020. They tested urine and feces and took samples from their mouths.
"In total, we collected 24 new coronavirus genomes from different species of bats, including four SARS-CoV-2 like coronaviruses," the researchers wrote in a report published in the journal Cell.
One was very similar, genetically to the SARS-CoV-2 virus that is causing the current pandemic, they said - a viral monster called RpYN06 taken from a species of bat called Rhinolophus Pusillus.
These results clearly show that viruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2 continue to circulate in bat populations, and in some regions may be present at a relatively high frequency.
Researchers are trying to find out where SARS-CoV-2 originated. Although a night owl is a potential source, it is possible for the virus to infect an intermediate animal. The SARS virus that caused the outbreak in 2002-2004 was traced to an animal called the "civet cat".
Bats are known reservoir hosts for a variety of viruses that cause serious illness in humans and have been associated with Hendra virus, Marburg virus, Ebola virus and, most commonly, coronaviruses. In addition to bats and humans, coronaviruses can infect a wide range of domestic and wild animals, including pigs, livestock, rats, cats, dogs, chickens, deer, and hedgehogs.
Although there is some controversy about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, a World Health Organization report said the most likely source is an animal - possibly a night owl.
People hunt bats and eat them. Meanwhile, bats can infect other animals eaten by humans. hunt and eat sticks, and bats can infect other animals that are also hunted and eaten by humans.
Source: CNN
