Environment

The coronavirus pandemic may be behind us for a while now, but research into the coronavirus is still ongoing.

An international research team has listed which animal species are most likely to have served as an intermediate host for the coronavirus.

Infected animals ended up at a market in Wuhang, China, in 2019. Researchers were unable to collect samples from those animals, but researchers from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were able to collect more than 800 samples from floors, walls and other surfaces.

A new analysis of that data showed that SARS-CoV-2 was present “near and within a stall with wild animals.” Samples that tested positive for the virus also contained DNA from animals such as the raccoon dog and the civet cat. The raccoon dog was genetically the most common animal in the samples. “And those are the same species of animals that transmitted the original SARS coronavirus to humans in 2002,” says co-author Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona. This is evident from a scientific paper published in the scientific journal Cell on Thursday.

(MH with SR for Tagtik/Source: Cell - NBC - Telegraph - Belga/Illustration: photo by Dreamlike Street on Unsplash)