
We discovered a coronavirus similar to the covid-19 virus 7 years ago - sahin-boydas
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24532693-700-we-discovered-a-coronavirus-similar-to-the-covid-19-virus-7-years-ago/
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koheripbal
This was reported a few weeks ago, and there's a podcast (This Week In
Virology) that goes into a little more detail - highly recommended.

The researchers that mapped the virus were part of a team that was sent to
collect samples from bats to help us identify and study viruses for the next
SARS/MERS outbreak.

Note that "similar" is far from meaning the "same" \- it just means the
closest match we've seen thus far, and therefore means it's very very likely
to have also evolved from bats. ...and they did not test human virulence, so I
think the notification n of "missed opportunity" here is a bit of a stretch.

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tpmx
MERS? (there's a paywall, so I'm just guessing here)

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tim333
Article text:

We discovered a coronavirus similar to the covid-19 virus 7 years ago

HEALTH 12 February 2020 By Debora MacKenzie

New Scientist Default Image Remus86/Getty Images (a bat)

THE Covid-19 coronavirus is similar to one detected in bats in China in 2013.
But a failure to act on the warnings of those who studied it means we missed
an opportunity to protect human health.

While some are now saying the Covid-19 virus passed to humans from pangolins,
it is likely that pangolins are merely victims of the infection, like us.
“From the virology evidence available to date, the virus is almost certainly
from a species of bat,” says Andrew Cunningham of the Zoological Society of
London.

For years, Zheng-Li Shi and her colleagues at the Wuhan Institute of Virology
have been isolating coronaviruses from horseshoe bats in caves in China’s
Yunnan province. In 2013, they found a coronavirus that could infect human
cells in the lab. Last week, Shi reported that this virus is 96 per cent
identical to the Covid-19 virus now spreading in people.

In 2016, Wayne Marasco at Harvard Medical School and his colleagues found that
the virus discovered by Shi’s team could replicate in human airway cells. They
described it as being “poised for human emergence”. However, they say further
research on this virus was hampered by the US government’s ban on work that
alters viruses in ways that might make them more dangerous.

Shi’s work has also revealed that viruses can pass directly from bats to
people living near their caves. Her findings suggest we didn’t need pangolins
to catch the Covid-19 virus, just as she previously revealed that SARS can
come directly from bats without first infecting civets.

“96% The similarity between Covid-19 virus and a virus found in 2013”

Last year, Shi warned that it was highly likely coronavirus outbreaks would
originate in bats in China. “The investigation of bat coronaviruses becomes an
urgent issue for the detection of early warning signs,” she wrote.

Now this opportunity has been missed, Shi has made a plea for increased
efforts to develop drugs and vaccines.

