Here are where bat coronaviruses have been collected throughout China. Guangdong province outlined in red in the south is where the SARS outbreak began. But SARS is believed to have originated from horseshoe bats in Yunnan province to the west before transferring to an intermediary host of palm civets and then humans.
Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan provinces in the south generally are the hotspots for bat coronaviruses in China. However there are bat coronaviruses throughout China.
I put the green dot where Wuhan is located in Hubei province. As you can see bat coronaviruses have been collected from bat caves in western Hubei province.
If you had no other information to go on it is generally a good guess to assume bats are an animal host of a particular virus. They actually surpass primates and rodents as likely carriers of potential viruses that could infect humans.
A number of prominent viruses have spilled over from bats. Horseshoe bats were the reservoir hosts for SARS. Fruitfly bats are the reservoir hosts for Marburg virus.
This is a good paper discussing all the reasons why bats are such perfect hosts for viruses:
https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/CMR.00017-06
You've got a free upvote from witness fuli.
Peace & Love!
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit