china’s coronavirus DID come from bats: Scientists reveal the virus is 96% identical to one found in the animals and is same as SARS as global death toll hits 362

Bats are likely the cause of coronavirus from China after scientists find the virus is 96 per cent identical to one found in the animals.

The virus, which has killed 362 people so far, was believed to have transferred to humans from an animal, but identifying which one has been challenging.

Now, using samples from seven patients with severe pneumonia caused by the coronavirus, scientists have found striking similarities to coronavirus found in bats.

The DNA is also 79.5 percent identical with the deadly SARS coronavirus, which suggests vaccines for the now non-existent virus may help with this epidemic.

Global cases have risen above 17,450, higher than the total recorded cases of the SARS virus that killed some 800 people in 2002 and 2003.   

Although scientists stress the animal source of the recent outbreak in China is yet to be officially declared, experts have confirmed a wholesale animal market in Wuhan city is to blame.

A menagerie of live animals including koalas, rats and wolf pups were available at the Huanan Seafood Market in central Wuhan – the outbreak’s epicentre.

While most research has pointed towards bats, research at Peking University implicated snakes as the most likely ‘reservoir’ of the rapidly spreading virus. 

The Huanan market was a hotspot with locals, who could choose to buy their meat ‘warm’ meaning it had been slaughtered just moment prior

Dr Michael Skinner, reader in virology at Imperial College London, said: ‘The discovery definitely places the origin of nCoV in bats in China.

‘We still do not know whether another species served as an intermediate host to amplify the virus, and possibly even to bring it to the market, nor what species that host might have been.

‘But the high level of sequence similarity between nCoV and TG13 is not really compatible with some of the more exotic hosts that were considered earlier in the epidemic.’

 Zheng-Li Shi, a virologist and researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and colleagues, analysed samples of seven people with what’s been dubbed ‘2019-nCoV’.

Six of those included were workers at the market in Wuhan, where cases were first reported in December.

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