Could pangolins be a piece of the coronavirus puzzle?
- Chinese researchers say a virus found in the animal is a 99 per cent genetic match to the one that has killed hundreds of people in China
A coronavirus isolated from pangolins is a 99 per cent genetic match to the one that has killed more than 600 people since an outbreak began in central China last month, according to a study by a team of Chinese civilian and military scientists.
Scientists have traced the origin of the 2019-nCoV coronavirus to a fruit bat found in Yunnan province a few years ago, but about 4 per cent of its genes were new. This suggested an intermediate host, and some studies had proposed various candidates such as snakes.
The team led by Professor Shen Yongyi at the South China Agricultural University in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, analysed more than 1,000 samples and found that more than 70 per cent of the pangolins they examined carried viruses that were from the same family as the infection found in the city of Wuhan, the scientists said on Friday.
At the microscopic level, the civilian researchers and their colleagues from the Academy of Military Medical Sciences in Beijing found that some pangolin viral strains appeared identical to the new coronavirus in humans – and further analysis showed they had 99 per cent of their genes in common.
“Pangolins are potential intermediate hosts, but there may be multiple intermediate hosts,” Shen said. “For example, with Sars [severe acute respiratory syndrome] in addition to civets, other small predators may also spread the virus.”