The WHO said in June that a lack of data from China made it difficult to determine when and how the coronavirus first entered the human population.
About 66,000 people in the Southeast Asia are annually infected with coronaviruses associated with him SARS and nearly 500 million people live near environments where bats host these viruses, according to a study which was released today.
The research, published in the scientific journal Nature Communications, notes that bat-to-human transmission of the virus is likely to be “significantly underestimated” and adds that recording bat species in the area could help efforts to determine origin of COVID-19.
The researchers focused on 26 bat species which are known to act as hosts for SARS-type coronaviruses in an area of ​​5.1 million square kilometers, stretching from China to Southeast and South Asia.
They then incorporated data on antibody levels among people who reported having come into contact with a bat.
Southern China, northeastern Myanmar, Laos, and northern Vietnam were characterized as areas with the greatest diversity of bat species that act as hosts for SARS-like coronaviruses (SARSr-CoVs).
“Our estimate that an average of 66,000 people are infected each year with SARS-CoV viruses in Southeast Asia suggests that bat-to-human transmission of these viruses is common in the region and has gone undetected by surveillance programs and clinical studies in majority of cases,” the researchers wrote.
“This evidence regarding the geography and extent of transmission can be used to target surveillance and prevention programs for potential future bat-associated coronavirus outbreaks,” the study notes.
COVID-19 is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 strain of the coronavirus.
The study’s co-authors include Peter Daszczak, a member of the World Health Organization (WHO) team investigating the origins of COVID-19 and early last year visiting Wuhan, where it was first identified the pandemic at the end of 2019.
THE WHERE announced in June that a lack of data from China makes it difficult to determine when and how the coronavirus first entered the human population.
A study published in the scientific journal Science at the end of July notes that the wildlife trade remains the best explanation for the origin of the pandemic, with two different sources of transmission likely to have occurred at the Huanan fish market in the city of Wuhan, where many of the first cases emerged.
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