With so much misinformation floating around, the US and the Chinese researchers have been working consistently to trace the origin of the novel coronavirus. The international team of researchers included scientists from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. They have already analysed Chinese bats and even used the technique of genetic analysis to trace the origin of the novel coronavirus before.
The report, which has been posted on Sunday, reported that the team found heightened levels of the presence of this virus in the southern and the south-western China and have advised close monitoring of the bats viruses in those specific areas. They have also advised changing human behaviour and consumption to further prevent the risks of such pandemics from happening in the future.
The research was supported by the grant to Ecohealth Alliance, a non-profit from New York that was recently cancelled by the National Institutes of Health. The grant has been for over $3 million with renewals that are likely going to happen in the near future.
The reports on this research have been accepted by the Nature Communications and were later posted on BioRxiv where majority of the scientific research papers are released before the official publication.
The group of researchers, majority of which include Chinese and American researchers have already conducted an exhaustive research for analysis of the coronavirus found in bats. They also worked on identifying the hotspots of these viruses into the humans which later result in outbreaks.
The genetic evidence found by the researchers that the virus is present in the bats was already a lot of information. The horseshoe bats are considered the hosts of the virus at this point, much like how they spread the SARs virus back in 2003.
None of the virus till date are close enough to the novel coronavirus to signify how or whether it jumped from the bats to humans. The researchers are still unsure of who the immediate progeniotor is and it could be either in bats or other animal.
Prior studies indicated Pangolins to be a possible cause and while there have been evidence of these organisms playing their part in the evolution of the virus, it is not sure whether they were the immediate source or not.
The new research also binds in the study of bats and the viral evolution that strongly gives more concrete evidence surrounding the suspected origin of the virus in the horseshoe bats. But, even that is not definitive at this point.
The reports also packs in further details of the coronavirus, the kind of evolution process they have and the kind of threat they impose on humans. Further renewal of the grant could have further supported the study.
The grant of the study was cancelled after Donald Trump described the contribution of the money to the Wuhan institite. Even with the conspiracy theories and the accusations, majority of the US scientists and intelligence agencies believe that the virus evolved in nature and is not man-made.
Richard Ebright, a microbiologist and biosafety expert at Rutgers University did argue on the fact that it is likely that there could have been an outbreak of the naturally evolved form of the novel coronavirus in the Wuhan lab and the fact that testing the lab safety is of dire importance at this point.
There have been no reported evidence about the spread of the virus starting from the lab in Wuhan. It was in this province that the coronavirus outbreak first happened but majority of the connections of the spread of the virus have been reported to be from the wet market in Wuhan.
For the study, the researchers, Zheng-Li Shi, director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the institute and Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, collected the oral and rectal swabs from the bats in caves across China from 2010 to 2015.
With the evidence that they have gathered over the course of years, the researchers do believe that the novel coronavirus likely originated from the Yunnan province but could not trace a particular site of origin other than that in the South west province of China.
The suspected species of the bats, the horseshoe bats, which is believed to be the cause behind the virus could likely have originated in China tens of millions of years ago. The people have long years of coexistence with the coronavirus, which the reports suggest spread from one bat to the other.
Daszak further reported that the area where the countries like China, Laos, Vietnam and Myanmar converge is likely the biggest hotspot for the virus.
The other likelihood that majority of the people ignore is the constant risks of urbanisation, population growth, and the intense range of livestock and poultry farming. This causes the virus to jump from one to the other, causing the spread of the virus to humans.
“People are farming wildlife all across Southern China, tens of thousands of people involved in the industry; they should be getting regular tests, not just for COVID-19, but for what other viruses they are picking up,” said Daszak.
He further reported that it is no doubt that such efforts do cost a lot of money and investment but it is one of the only ways to prevent the second resurgence of a similar pandemic in the near future.
