Chinese researchers find new batch of coronaviruses in bats

(Jane Barlow - WPA Pool/Getty Images)

By Hanna Park

Researchers in China said they have found a new batch of coronaviruses in bats that resembles the COVID-19 virus, The Hill reported Friday.

According to the researchers, they found their sample in a single, small region of Yunnan province between May 2019 and November 2020. The samples from small, forest-dwelling bats consisted of testing the urine, feces and mouth swabs.

"In total, we assembled 24 novel coronavirus genomes from different bat species, including four SARS-CoV-2 like coronaviruses," the researchers wrote in the journal Cell.

One strain was very similar genetically to the SARS-CoV-2 virus that has caused the current pandemic. The viral sample RpYN06 was garnered from the Rhinolophus pusillus bat species.

"Together with the SARS-CoV-2 related virus collected from Thailand in June 2020, these results clearly demonstrate that viruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2 continue to circulate in bat populations, and in some regions might occur at a relatively high frequency," they wrote.

The study, released on Thursday, comes amid renewed attention over the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic in recent weeks.

While many researchers suspect the illness originated in a bat, they hold that it's possible the virus infected an intermediary animal.

President Joe Biden has called for an investigation into whether the virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China – a claim that Beijing has severely denounced.

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