Should we blame bats for the spread of coronavirus?
In late 1976, a doctor at a missionary hospital in the northern Democratic Republic of Congo - then known as Zaire - reported an outbreak of a mysterious illness. Villagers were showing up with symptoms of nosebleeds and bloody diarrhoea. Most of the patients died within days, along with 11 of the 17 doctors and nurses treating them.
Scientists are still undecided on the number of diseases lurking in the wild. They know little about the viruses that latch onto humans. An animal can be an intermediary host - a vehicle for the virus to ride on until it infects another species. What scientists are really interested in finding is a reservoir host, the origin of a virus.
Scientists are not lucky all the time. The animal reservoir behind the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome , just like Ebola, is still unknown, according to the World Health Organisation . If the answer is not in the numbers then it could be in a bat’s physiology, says Jones, who has closely worked with bats for years.
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