Three new types of coronavirus have been discovered and reported to academia in bats living in Laos that match more than 95% to the virus that causes COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2).
Among the known coronaviruses, it is the closest to the COVID-19 virus.
This seems to support the theory of a natural origin of the COVID-19 virus and raise concerns that there may be more coronavirus species that can infect humans.
According to Nature.com, an online news site for the scientific journal Nature, a team led by Dr Marc Erwa, head of the pathogen detection laboratory at the Pasteur Institute in France, collected and analyzed the saliva and feces samples of 645 bats from caves in northern Laos. .
Through this, we found a coronavirus that matches more than 95% of the Corona 19 virus (SARS-CoV-2) in three common tube bats, and the 'Research Square', which collects the research results before official publication ) was published.
This paper has not yet been peer-reviewed.
The COVID-19 virus infects humans by attaching to a receptor called ACE2 on the surface of human cells.
Edward Holmes, a virologist at the University of Sydney in Australia, said, "When we first analyzed the coronavirus, the receptor-binding region was something we had never seen before." It has been confirmed that this receptor-binding domain exists in nature.
(Photo = Olivier Farcy, provided by Nature, Yonhap News)