Bat Virus Evolution Suggests Wildlife Trade Sparked COVID-19 Virus Emergence in Humans - P6
- Shidonna Raven
- 2 hours ago
- 1 min read
March 7, 2025
Source: UC San Diego Today
Photo / Image Source: Unsplash,
“The viruses most closely related to the original SARS coronavirus were found in palm civets and raccoon dogs in southern China, hundreds of miles from the bat populations that were their original source,” said co-senior author Michael Worobey, Ph.D., professor and head of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at The University of Arizona. For more than two decades the scientific community has concluded that the live-wildlife trade was how those hundreds of miles were covered. We’re seeing exactly the same pattern with SARS-CoV-2.”
The findings dispute a widely circulated idea that SARS-CoV-1 emerged naturally, but SARS-CoV2 was the result of a lab leak.
“At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a concern that the distance between Wuhan and the bat virus reservoir was too extreme for a zoonotic origin,” Wertheim said. “This paper shows that it isn't unusual and is, in fact, extremely similar to the emergence of SARS-CoV-1 in 2002.”
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