Where did SARS-CoV-2 come from?
Understandably, people want to know where this new virus came from. A number of explanations have been put forward, but our research, like that of many other groups, shows that SARS-CoV-2 evolved from a coronavirus that originally circulated in wild bats. Furthermore, our work suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic was most likely caused inadvertently by infections that occurred while trading animals susceptible to bat coronaviruses. Understanding the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic will help us to prevent coronavirus pandemics from happening in the future. This animation from evolutionary virologists Spyros Lytras and Professor David L. Robertson explores the origins of SARS-CoV-2 and explains how we can work out where new viruses come from.
‘The evolutionary origins of SARS-CoV-2.’ Animation by Giuseppe Forestieri (Motion Aptitude), developed with Spyros Lytras, David L. Robertson and Lucy Wallace.