SARS-CoV-2–like coronavirus may be widespread in bats in Southeast AsiaA coronavirus sharing 92.6% of nucleotide identity with SARS-CoV-2 was detected in bats in Cambodia in 2010, according to a new study in Nature Communications, adding to the understanding of natural reservoirs for the virus causing the COVID-19 pandemic.Before this study, the closest genomic relatives to SARS-CoV-2 were identified from horseshoe bats sampled in southern China's Yunnan province.
This is the first study to suggest probable reservoirs outside of China, and the authors said the samples suggest that this viral lineage circulates in a much wider geographic area than previously reported."Our current understanding of the geographic distribution of the SARS-CoV