Scientists Enter Cave Researching New Corona Virus In Bats

Illustrated photos (Tine Ivanic / Unsplash)

JAKARTA - A team of scientists from the United States (US) has a unique way to get new samples so that they can be researched and find out about the new type of corona virus. They wear hazmat suits, masks and thick gloves to cover every inch of their skin and then head for the cave to catch the bats. Contact with bat feces or urine can expose them to the world's deadliest virus.

Equipped with headlights, they put a net in the dark, overgrown entrance of the bamboo trees. The area is a large limestone cave in Yunnan Province, China.

Reporting from CNN. Monday 27 April, the Smithsonian Institution conducted samples of bats in Myanmar and Kenya where six new coronaviruses were found. "So far we have been able to identify six new coronaviruses in Myanmar," said Suzan Murray, leader of the Smithsonian Institution's Global Health Program.

Then, they patiently waited for dusk. When the sun goes down, thousands of bats fly out of the cave, looking for food and straight into their nets. The scientists collected the nets and carefully placed the bat so that it could be sedated with a mild drug, then carefully drew blood from the veins on the bat's wings.

"We also do oral and fecal swabs and collect feces," said Peter Daszak, who heads the EcoHealth Alliance, a US NGO that specializes in detecting new viruses and preventing pandemics.

Daszak is a virus hunter. Over the past ten years, he has visited more than 20 countries to prevent the next major pandemic by searching caves inhabited by bats to find new pathogens. More specifically, the new corona virus.

"We have collected more than 15 thousand bat samples, which has led to the identification of around 500 new coronaviruses," he said. Additionally, one of those viruses was found in a cave in China in 2013 and is possibly the ancestor of COVID-19.

"The novel coronavirus (which causes COVID-19) matches a sample taken from a horseshoe bat in a cave in Yunnan in 2013, 96.2 percent identical." added Daszak.

Coronavirus research

Prior to the 2003 SARS epidemic, research on the coronavirus did not attract much attention. "It's not seen as an offshoot of a medical research section," said Wang Linfa, a virologist at Duke-NUS in Singapore, who developed the tool used to analyze samples collected by the EcoHealth Alliance.

At that time only two human coronaviruses had been identified, both of which were discovered in the 1960s. In 2009, Predict was founded and funded by USAID, led by the University of California Davis, together with the EcoHealth Alliance, Smithsonian Institution, Wildlife Conservation Society and Metabiota, a Californian company that has developed an epidemic tracker.

These agencies are tasked with identifying and responding to new zoonotic diseases, including the coronavirus, before they spread to humans. Since its establishment, five types of human coronavirus have been identified, including the ancestor of COVID-19. Daszak estimates that bats have 15,000 coronaviruses, of which only a few hundred are currently known.

The organization that houses Daszak focuses on conducting research in southwestern China, specifically on the limestone caves in Yunnan Province, which is known for its large bat population. "We targeted China at first because we were looking for the origins of SARS ... But then we realized that there are hundreds of other dangerous coronaviruses there, so we decided to turn our attention to find it," explained Daszak.

Predict operates in 31 countries. Another virus hunting team, owned by the Smithsonian Institution, is focused on Myanmar and Kenya. "This is an area with a lot of wildlife biodiversity, a growing human population encroaching on natural habitats, a good travel network and a large number of livestock, which means there is a high potential for the spread of the virus between species," said Dawn Zimmerman, who is leading several collection expeditions. Smithsonian Institution virus samples.

In order to make the move to humans, coronaviruses must be able to bind to their cell receptors, which normally require an intermediate animal host. These hosts could be weasels, camels, pangolins, or other mammals that are closely related to humans. But the corona virus can also be transmitted directly through bats. However, only bats that carry a very high proportion of viruses are capable of infecting humans, such as Marburg, Nipah, Ebola and SARS.

"Because mammalian bats fly, their bodies are exposed to a lot of stress, which would normally result in an immune system response. To deal with this, they have to lower their immune system, which makes them more susceptible to viruses and able to tolerate higher viral shedding," he explained. Daszak.

Bats also make up about 20 percent of all mammal species and congregate in large colonies in crowded caves, making the spread of the virus among bats even greater.