Plot Yields Bats With a Trove of New Coronaviruses

302 samples of faeces and urine and 109 mouth swabs taken from 342 live bats studied.
Team sequenced 24 coronavirus genomes, of which 4 were new viruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2.
One of the viruses isolated from a Rhinolophus pusillus bat shared 94.5% of its genome with the pandemic virus.
The results suggest that viruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2 continue to circulate in bats.

According to an article published in the Nature, bats in the province of Yunnan in southern China have...