[url]https://flutrackers.com/forum/forum/asia-ad/asia-covid-19-sept-13-2020-may-31-2021/924316-closest-known-relatives-of-virus-behind-covid-19-found-in-laos[/url] or https://flutrackers.com/forum/forum/asia-ad/asia-covid-19-sept-13-2020-may-31-2021/924316-closest-known-relatives-of-virus-behind-covid-19-found-in-laos - https://flutrackers.com/forum/forum/asia-ad/asia-covid-19-sept-13-2020-may-31-2021/924316-closest-known-relatives-of-virus-behind-covid-19-found-in-laos ;Scientists have found three viruses in bats in Laos that are more similar to SARS-CoV-2 than any known viruses. Researchers say that parts of their genetic code bolster claims that the virus behind COVID-19 has  https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02519-1" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(35, 121, 181); text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(235, 244, 249); - a natural origin  — but their discovery also raises fears that there are numerous coronaviruses with the potential to infect people.

David Robertson, a virologist at the University of Glasgow, UK, calls the find “fascinating, and quite terrifying”.

To make the discovery, Marc Eloit, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and his colleagues in France and Laos, took saliva, faeces and urine samples from 645 bats in caves in northern Laos. In three horseshoe (Rhinolophus) bat species, they found viruses that are each more than 95% identical to SARS-CoV-2, which they named BANAL-52, BANAL-103 and BANAL-236.

DJ Linked to [url]https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02596-2[/url] or https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02596-2 - https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02596-2 ; Studies of bats in China and Laos show southeast Asia is a hotspot for potentially dangerous viruses similar to SARS-CoV-2.

Particularly concerning is that the new viruses contain receptor binding domains that are almost identical to that of SARS-CoV-2, and can therefore infect human cells. The receptor binding domain allows SARS-CoV-2 to attach to a receptor called ACE2 on the surface of human cells to enter them.

“When SARS-CoV-2 was first sequenced, the receptor binding domain didn’t really look like anything we’d seen before,” says Edward Holmes, a virologist at the University of Sydney in Australia. This caused some people to speculate that the virus had been created in a laboratory. But the Laos coronaviruses confirm these parts of SARS-CoV-2 exist in nature, he says.

“I am more convinced than ever that SARS-CoV-2 has a natural origin,” agrees Linfa Wang, a virologist at Duke–NUS Medical School in Singapore.

Together with relatives of SARS-CoV-2 discovered in Thailand2, Cambodia3 and Yunnan in southern China4, the study demonstrates that southeast Asia is a “hotspot of diversity for SARS-CoV-2 related viruses”, says Alice Latinne, an evolutionary biologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society Vietnam in Hanoi.

If this CoViD-19/SARS-2 did NOT escape from the (Wuhan) lab we may have a bigger problem ! The more urgent we invest in better vaccines, detection, treatment etc. Related;

[url]https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03217-0[/url] or https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03217-0 - https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03217-0 ; 

Two lab freezers in Asia have yielded surprising discoveries. Researchers have told Nature they have found a coronavirus that is closely related to SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the pandemic, in horseshoe bats stored in a freezer in Cambodia. Meanwhile, a team in Japan has reported the discovery of another closely related coronavirus — also found in frozen bat droppings.

The viruses are the first known relatives of SARS-CoV-2 to be found outside China, which supports the World Health Organization’s search across Asia for the pandemic’s animal origin. Strong evidence suggests that SARS-CoV-2 originated in horseshoe bats, but whether it passed directly from bats to people, or through an intermediate host, remains a mystery.

and [url]https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02519-1[/url] or https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02519-1 - https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02519-1 ; SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, could have spilled from animals to people multiple times, according to a preliminary analysis of viral genomes sampled from people infected in China and elsewhere early in the pandemic.

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If the virus did jump between animals and people on several occasions, the fact that lineages A and B are linked to people who visited different markets in Wuhan suggests that multiple individual animals, of one or more species, that were carrying a progenitor of SARS-CoV-2 could have been transported across Wuhan, infecting people in at least two locations.

A study published in June1 found that live animals susceptible to SARS-CoV-2, such as raccoon dogs and mink, were sold in numerous markets in Wuhan. Previous studies2 of the virus that caused severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) have concluded that it, too, probably jumped multiple times from animals to people.

DJ If-in the early stages-the virus did see a chance to "jump" over and over from human to non-human hosts and back again risks for further variants-linked with spread in non-human hosts-increase "a lot"!

Good find!