Chinese Researchers Find New Batch of COVID in Bats

Chinese Researchers said on Thursday that they had found a group of new coronaviruses in bats, including the one that may be the second-closest yet, genetically, to the Covid-19 virus.According to the Researchers, their findings in a single, small region of Yunnan area, southwestern China, show just how many coronaviruses are there in bats and how many have the potential of getting transmitted to humans.

Weifeng Shi of the University of Shandong and other colleagues gathered a few samples of wild bats for research between May19-Nov 2020. They tested their urine and feces as well as took swabs from the bats’ mouths.One of the tested Coronavirus was very similar, genetically to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, causing the current pandemic. The Researchers said that a viral sample called RpYN06 is taken from a horseshoe bat species called the Rhinolophus pusillus.

Researchers are also trying to find the origin where the SARS-CoV-2 came from. Although a bat is a possible source, it is also possible that the virus might have infected an intermediate animal. The SARS virus that began an outbreak back in the years 2002-2004 was tracked to have come from an animal called a civet cat.

Most of the collected samples came from the species of horseshoe bats. In 2017, Researchers who were sampling a cave in Yunnan found viruses very close genetically to the SARS virus in the horseshoe bats.Three samples were described in Thursday’s report and were also close to the SARS virus genetically.