Hong Kong: Amid global efforts to combat the coronavirus epidemic, a recent medical test report revealed that the disease is being spread to humans from an endangered species that looks like a scaly anteater and that is also considered as a delicacy Chinese cuisine.
The outbreak of the deadly coronavirus is traced to outbreak from a market in Wuhan in China where meats of all kind of wild animals are being sold including the including long snout, tail and scaled mammals like pangolins.
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As per reports, in a latest medical study done by the South China Agricultural University, it reveals that the strain of deadly coronavirus that is spreading among humans has 99 % similarity to that of the strains found in scaled mammals like pangolins.
South China Agricultural University’s president Liu Yahong revealing the outcomes of the study to media cited that their test results showed pangolins are a potential intermediate host of the novel coronavirus making its outbreak among humans.
Notably, earlier two medical studies conducted by Chinese researchers acclaimed to journal Nature stated that bats are likely sparked the outbreak of the deadly epidermic. The Chinese research suggests that bats passed the virus to pangolins, which acted as the intermediary in spreading the virus to humans.
Head of veterinary medicine at Britain’s University of Cambridge, James Wood stated that the South China Agricultural research has not been reviewed yet.
“The evidence for the potential involvement of pangolins in the outbreak has not been published other than by a university press release,” Wood said citing this cannot be a scientific evidence.
