Illegally hunted pangolin could have spread coronavirus

THE endangered pangolin may be the link that facilitated the spread of the novel coronavirus across China, scientists said yesterday.

Researchers have long suspected that the virus, which has killed more than 630 people and infected 31,000, was passed from an animal to a human at a market in Wuhan late last year.

The South China Agricultural University said scientists had identified the scaly anteater as a “potential intermediate host”.

The virus is believed to have originated in bats, but researchers believe an “intermediate host” could have transmitted it to humans. Scientists found the genome sequences of viruses on pangolins to be 99 per cent identical to those on coronavirus patients, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

The pangolin is considered the planet’s most trafficked animal, with more than a million snatched from Asian and African forests in the past decade, the International Union for Conservation of Nature has said.

They are sold at markets in China and Vietnam, where their scales are used in traditional medicine – despite having no medical benefits – and their meat is bought on the black market.

Experts called for China to release more data.

Simply reporting the similarity between the genome sequences of viruses is “not sufficient,” said Prof James Wood, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Cambridge. He said the results could be due to “contamination from a highly infected environment”.

China has been accused by conservationists of tolerating a shadowy trade in endangered animals for food or traditional medicines.

The SARS virus that killed hundreds of people in China and Hong Kong in 2002-03 likely originated in bats, scientists believe, later reaching humans via civets.