The coronavirus has held the world in its grip for more than a year and a half, but where it comes from is still unclear. French scientists have now found three bat viruses that are very similar to sars-cov-2 in northern Laos.
The viruses found more than 2,000 kilometers south of Wuhan, China, once again indicate that Covid-19 did not escape from a lab, but jumped to humans via bats. “It is quite plausible that these bats are a melting pot of these types of closely related viruses. And we are gradually discovering how big that cloud actually is,” professor of coronavirology Eric Snijder (LUMC) told de Volkskrant after he the new results saw.
The French researchers at the Pasteur Institute in Paris caught 645 bats in a rugged, but touristic nature reserve. Three animals were found to carry coronaviruses 95 percent similar to SARS-COV-2.
Like Snijder, other scientists believe the discovery adds to evidence that the virus did not escape from a lab in Wuhan. “I am now more convinced than ever that sars-cov-2 has a natural origin,” says Singaporean virologist Linfa Wang, for example. Nature.
