Horseshoe bat
Photographer: Menahem Kahana / AFP via Getty Images
Photographer: Menahem Kahana / AFP via Getty Images
Sign up here to receive our daily coronavirus newsletter on what you need to know and Subscribe to our Covid-19 podcast for the latest news and analysis.
Scientists discovered that the new coronavirus appears to have been inadvertently circulating in bats for decades.
Horseshoe bats are the most plausible source of the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen, researchers say Maciej Boni, of the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics at Pennsylvania State University, said in a study published Tuesday in Nature Microbiology.
The origins of the virus have been at the center of much debate as the pandemic continues to hamper economies and the death toll exceeds 654,000. the The World Health Organization sent experts to China to study the matter this month after US government officials fueled speculation that the pathogen escaped from a Chinese laboratory.
Tracing the virus lineage is crucial at the start of an outbreak because it can allow health authorities to separate people from the animal host to the pathogen, and later to help prevent future health crises. The researchers warned that other virus lineages in bats could have the potential to spread to humans.
The findings highlight how “difficult it will be to identify viruses with the potential to cause major human outbreaks before they emerge,” Boni and colleagues wrote. “This underscores the need for a global network of real-time human disease surveillance systems.”
The research team reconstructed the evolution of the virus by tracking its recombination history. They concluded that pangolins probably did not act as a host for the virus, although squamous mammals may have played a role in triggering the pandemic simply by transmitting it.
.
