New Study Shows The Coronavirus Might Have Originated From Another Country into China

When the news of there being an extremely contagious yet mysterious virus appearing in Wuhan as the new year approached, all eyes were on the country where the virus was believed to have originated from.

Those early days now seem like a lifetime ago after spending months locked up at home last year, right?

Many wanted to place the blame on China for endangering the entire world back then, with a certain (former) president even threatening to make them pay for what they did.

But in a twist of events, what if the virus actually didn’t originate from China, but somewhere else instead?

Horseshoe Bats Carrying Coronaviruses Found Outside China

Yep, it’s all starting to sound a little like a conspiracy theory, but there have been actual studies pointing towards that fact.

Professor Wang Linfa from the Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore conducted a new study as a co-author and found out that horseshoe bats, which carry coronaviruses very similar to that which caused COVID-19, have been found outside of China.

He stated that it is thus likely that the origins of COVID-19 may actually have arrived at Wuhan from elsewhere.

The study was published in the Nature Communications journal on 9 Feb, with new discoveries of finding a coronavirus in the horseshoe bat Rhinolophus acuminatus in Thailand that shared a 91.5% similarity to the Sars-CoV-2 virus that led to COVID-19.

Previously, the closest link they found was a 96.2% genetic similarity in the coronavirus carried by the Rhinolophus affinis horseshoe bat in Yunnan, China.

Yet another study also found that the Rhinolophus shameli horseshoe bat in Cambodia carried coronaviruses of a 92.6% genetic similarity to Sars-CoV-2.

These species may have slightly cheem names, but they’re all actually part of the Rhinolophus family, which contains over a 100 species and live all over the world from Australia to Europe.

Thankfully, Singapore doesn’t house any of the three species of bats that were found to contain the similar coronaviruses, but similar species such as Blyth’s horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus lepidus) and the Trefoil horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus trifoliatus) live among us.

Cross-border surveillance is needed to unearth the original host of the virus, commented the authors of the paper in light of their findings.

Prof Wang said that in order to determine this, there needs to be a similarity of at least 99% between the virus carried by the animal and Sars-CoV-2, which was the case back in 2003 when the SARS virus ran rampant. He also happens to be one of the experts who first confirmed that bats were the original carriers of the SARS virus.

Civets were found to carry a virus that indeed had a 99% similarity to the virus that caused the transmission of SARS amongst humans back then, and they were known as intermediate hosts.

They Tried To Find Out The Presence Of Antibodies

Serological tests were conducted in this latest study to determine if neutralising antibodies against the virus could be found in bats and pangolins, yet another animal that carried coronaviruses similar to Sars-CoV-2.

Neutralising antibodies assist the body in preventing the virus from latching onto the host cell and invading them, being a special group of antibodies.

Samples were taken from bats and pangolins in Thailand to test them for the presence of these neutralising antibodies. Serological tests as such only help to indicate if a past infection had occurred, rather than showing whether they were currently infected or not, similar to some COVID-19 tests.

4 of the 98 blood samples among the bats were found to indeed contain strong neutralising antibodies, which suggests that Thai bats may be carrying more closely related virus, said Prof Wang.

The 10 pangolins were of unknown origins as they had been confiscated by Thai authorities, but none of them was currently infected with the virus. Only one tested positive for the presence of neutralising antibodies.

Prof Wang commented that the results meant that pangolins were particularly susceptible to contracting the virus, but it’s unclear if they were the intermediate or transmitting host.

Don’t Kill Wildlife, However

Many are concerned with how to handle wildlife now in this situation, where animals may just be unwilling hosts of such coronaviruses that affect us too.

Recently, out of fear that a mutated form of coronavirus found in mink could potentially sabotage the effectiveness of a future vaccine, Denmark began culling all the minks farmed in the country, where their fur is used to make coats.

Culling refers to the intentional slaughter of wildlife in order to eradicate them, which is a pretty cruel thing to do.

However, Prof Wang firmly stated that culling wildlife was not the way to go, but active surveillance and monitoring instead would be enough.

This sentiment was echoed by a National University of Singapore (NUS) mammal researcher Marcus Chua, who said that there is a lower risk of zoonosis transmission from wildlife to humans as compared to large-scale farming where humans are in close contact with animals.

“Extermination of bats is no good because studies have shown that disturbing bat habitats and attempting to cull them could result in a change in their behaviour and may also stress them out – which could cause increased virus prevalence and shedding,” he added.

Instead, we should keep a respectful distance away from wildlife and avoid disturbing their habitats.

Well, at this stage, it’s safe to say we should leave it up to the experts to be concerned about the origins of the virus, and just do our part to quell the spread of it.

Featured Image: Martin Janca / Shutterstock.com