# life: inside the mysterious (i.e. secret) Yunnan cave, a key to the bizarre jump of the Chinese covid-19 virus

<< In 2004, deep in the wilderness of China’s Yunnan province, a group of scientists from the Wuhan Institute of Virology discovered a cave full of wild bats carrying hundreds of SARS-related viruses. Their work, published in a draft paper in 2005, ( Science. 2005 Oct 28;310(5748):676-9. Epub 2005 Sep 29.  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16195424 ) unearthed the link between SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and bats for the first time. >>

<< Now the virologist who led that study, Shi Zhengli, has revealed one of the strains found in that cave - the exact location of which is a closely guarded secret - is almost identical to the 2019-nCoV coronavirus which has so far killed at least 1,115 people and infected more than 45,000 worldwide. >>

<< Professor Shi ran the genome sequence of 2019-nCoV - now officially known as COVID-19 - through the bat-related virus database she built up over ten years and found it was a 96 per cent match to a virus found in the droppings of horseshoe bats. >>

Marnie O’Neill. Mysterious bat cave in Chinese wilderness could hold key to coronavirus. news.com.au Feb 13, 2020.

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/mysterious-bat-cave-in-chinese-wilderness-could-hold-key-to-coronavirus/news-story/530063aeb9de7020e626f1c4839b9777

Also

Zhou, P., Yang, X., Wang, X. et al. A pneumonia outbreak associated with a new coronavirus of probable bat origin. Nature. doi: 10.1038/s41586-020-2012-7. Jan 29, 2020.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2012-7

Human uses of bats (also in chinese traditional medicine). Wikipedia. Last edited 11 days ago by Enwebb.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_uses_of_bats

Bat as food. Wikipedia. Last edited 7 days ago by Enwebb.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_as_food