Beijing (AFP)

The pangolin, a small mammal with scales in danger of extinction, could be the animal that transmitted the new coronavirus to humans, Chinese scientists said on Friday.

Researchers at the Southern China University of Agriculture have identified pangolin as "a possible intermediate host" that has facilitated the transmission of the virus, the university said in a statement, without further details.

An animal that harbors a virus without being sick and can transmit it to other species is called a "reservoir". In the case of the new coronavirus, it is certainly a bat: according to a recent study, the genomes of this virus and those which circulate in this animal are identical to 96%.

But as the bat virus is not equipped to attach to human receptors, it has no doubt passed through another species to adapt to humans, called "intermediate host".

However, after testing more than 1,000 samples from wild animals, scientists have determined that the genomes of virus sequences taken from pangolins are 99% identical to those found in patients with the new coronavirus, according to the agency. state new China.

The new virus appeared in December in a market in Wuhan (center) where many animals, including wild mammals, were sold for food.

Given the nature of this coronavirus, experts suspected that the "intermediate host" was a mammal. The hypothesis of a snake, long gone, had quickly been swept away.

During the SARS epidemic (2002-03), also caused by a coronavirus, the intermediary was the civet, a small mammal whose meat is appreciated in China.

As part of its measures to stem the recent epidemic, China announced at the end of January a temporary ban on the trade in wild animals, banning for an indefinite period the breeding, transport or sale of all wild animal species.

Nearly 100,000 pangolins are victims each year in Asia and Africa of an illegal traffic which makes it the most poached species in the world, largely in front of the much more publicized elephants or rhinoceros, according to the NGO WildAid.

Their delicate flesh is highly prized by Chinese and Vietnamese gourmets, as are their scales, their bones and their organs in traditional Asian medicine.

In 2016, the International Convention on Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) voted to include pangolins in its appendix 1, which strictly prohibits its trade. Despite this measure, their traffic has only increased, according to NGOs.

© 2020 AFP