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According to a study released on Monday, researchers found coronaviruses are closely linked to SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the current COVID-19 pandemic, in bats kept in laboratory freezers in Cambodia and Japan. in the journal Nature.
The virus discovered in Cambodia was present in two Shamel’s horseshoe bats (Rhinolophus shameli), captured in the north of the country in 2010 and then stored in the freezer. In parallel, a team in Japan reported the discovery of another closely related coronavirus found in frozen bat droppings, the study says.
“These viruses are the first known relatives of SARS-CoV-2 to be found outside of China,” notes the article, which supports the World Health Organization (WHO) research in Asia to determine the animal’s origin. pandemic.
However, it is not yet known whether the novel SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus was transmitted directly from bats to humans or through an intermediate host, according to the study.
“Both results are exciting because they confirm that viruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2 are relatively common in Rhinolophus bats and even found in bats found outside of China,” explained Alice Latinne, an evolutionary biologist at Wildlife Conservation. Society Vietnam in Hanoi, which saw some of the Cambodian team’s analysis.
Aaron Irving, an infectious disease researcher at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, also plans to test preserved samples of bats and other mammals. According to him, the findings suggest that other “still unknown SARS-CoV-2 relatives” could be stored in laboratory freezers.
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