Navigating Though Species: SARS-Cov-2 And The Jump From Bats To Humans

Scientists involved in the search for the source of SARS-CoV-2 have pointed to a “jump” from bats occurring in and around Wuhan, China. Whether the virus moved from bats into people directly or if it traveled through an intermediate species was a subject of great debate in the scientific community. Previous forms of coronaviruses, such as SARS-CoV or MERS, traveled from bats through civet cats or camels, and during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists looked at pangolins as a possible intermediary between bats and humans.

This debate may be over according to new findings from a team of researchers in the United Kingdom, United States and Belgium. According to an article in SciTech Daily based on a paper in PLOS Biology, the virus causing COVID-19 likely jumped directly from bats to humans. Perhaps most surprising is that scientists found that the genetic changes that make the virus more transmissible in humans likely occurred before the jump.