Bats are the natural hosts of SARS-CoV-2

ABSTRACT

The novel coronavirus pneumonia caused by SARS-CoV-2 has been rapidly spread to many countries since its discovery in December 2019. It was described by many international organizations and media as the most serious crisis facing the world since the Second World War. Scientists have demonstrated that novel coronavirus pneumonia has a similarity of 96.2% with the whole genome sequence of bat coronavirus in Yunnan, and it is speculated that bat is the most likely source of infection. Bats were the natural hosts of many important zoonoses.At present, there were more than 60 kinds of viruses isolated and identified from bats, most of which are highly pathogenic zoonoses. In this review, the gene structure of SARS-CoV-2, the possible host of SARS-CoV-2 and the biological characteristics of bats were introduced, which provided reference for further research.