Cambodia bat researchers on mission to track Covid-19 origins

In an attempt to understand the Coronavirus pandemic, the researchers are collecting samples from bats in northern Cambodia by returning to a region where a very similar virus was found in the animals a decade ago.

An eight-member IPC research team has been collecting samples from bats and logging their species, sex, age and other details for a week. Similar research is going on in the Philippines.

In 2010, two samples from horseshoe bats were collected in Stung Treng province near Laos and kept in freezers at the Institut Pasteur du Cambodge (IPC) in Phnom Penh.

Last year, the tests a close relative to the coronavirus that has killed more than 4.6 million people worldwide.

“We hope that the result from this study can help the world to have a better understanding about Covid-19,” field coordinator Thavry Hoem told Reuters, as she held a net to catch bats.

Dr. Veasna Duong, Head of Virology at the IPC, said his institute had made four such trips in the past two years, hoping for clues about the origin and evolution of the bat-borne virus.

“We want to find out whether the virus is still there and … to know how the virus has evolved,” he told Reuters.

“If we try to be near wildlife, the chances of getting the virus carried by wildlife are more than normal. The chances of the virus transforming to infect humans are also more,” he said.

“(The project) aims to provide new knowledge on wild meat trade chains in Cambodia, document the diversity of betacoronaviruses circulating through these chains, and develop a flexible and integrated early-detection system of viral spill-over events,” Gillebaud said.