Bat Virus Evolution Suggests Wildlife Trade Sparked COVID-19 Virus Emergence in Humans - P4

By Susanne Clara Bard

March 7, 2025

Source: UC San Diego Today

Photo / Image Source: Unsplash,

“Horseshoe bats have an estimated foraging area of around 2-3 km and a dispersal capacity similar to the diffusion velocity we estimated for the sarbecoviruses related to SARS-CoV-2,” said co-senior author Simon Dellicour, Ph.D., head of the Spatial Epidemiology Lab at Université Libre de Bruxelles and visiting professor at KU Leuven.

In contrast, the analysis also revealed that the most recent sarbecovirus ancestors of both SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 left their points of origin less than 10 years before they were first reported to infect humans — more than a thousand kilometers away.

“We show that the original SARS-CoV-1 was circulating in Western China — just one to two years before the emergence of SARS in Guangdong Province, South Central China, and SARS-CoV-2 in Western China or Northern Laos — just five to seven years before the emergence of COVID-19 in Wuhan,” said Jonathan E. Pekar, Ph.D., a 2023 graduate of the Bioinformatics and Systems Biology program at UC San Diego School of Medicine, now a  postdoctoral researcher at the University of Edinburgh. 

The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct

How can such practices impact your health? How Why?

COVID Vaccine. Shidonna Raven Garden & Cook, Soaring by Design

Fitness & Exercise

Subscribe

Share the wealth of health with your friends and family by sharing this article with 3 people today.

If this article was helpful to you, donate to the Shidonna Raven Garden and Cook E-Magazine Today. Thank you in advance.