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Chinese researchers have announced that they have discovered new coronaviruses among bats, including one that is the closest genetically to COVID-19 identified so far, reports CNN, taken over by Hotnews.
According to the researchers, their findings in a single small region in southwest China’s Yunnan Province show how many coronaviruses are present among bats and how many of them could have the potential to jump on humans.
Weifeng Shi of Shandong University and her colleagues collected samples of bats living in forests between May 2019 and November 2020, testing their urine and feces and taking saliva samples.
“In total, we built 24 new genomes of new coronaviruses from different bat species, including four new SARS-CoV2 coronaviruses,” the researchers wrote in a study published in the journal Cell.
One of them, called RpYN06 and found in the bat species Rhinolophus pusillus, was very similar genetically to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that triggered the global pandemic, according to the researchers.
They claim that RpYN06 is the closest coronavirus to SARS-CoV-2 discovered so far, except for genetic differences in the spiky protein used by the virus to attach to the cell.
“These results clearly show that SARS-CoV-2-related viruses continue to circulate in bat populations and may have a relatively high incidence in some regions.”
“Bats are well-known reservoirs for a variety of viruses that cause severe disease in humans and have been associated with outbreaks of Hendra, Marburg, Ebola and, most notably, coronaviruses,” say Chinese researchers.
The study published by Chinese researchers comes in the context in which the theory of the escape from a laboratory in Wuhan of SARS-CoV-2 began to be more and more circulated after the appearance of new reports of the American and British intelligence services.
G7 leaders, meeting in Cornwall on Friday, have already announced that they will ask the World Health Organization (WHO) for a new and transparent investigation into the origins of the coronavirus, according to a statement released before the meeting.
The request was initiated by the administration led by Joe Biden, following the decision of the US President to extend the US investigation into the origins of the pandemic, because not all doubts about the possible “escape” of the virus from a laboratory in Wuhan have been clarified.
The announcement of G7 leaders comes after many prominent scientists called for a new investigation into the origin of SARS-CoV-2 to prevent another pandemic.
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