The situation with this novel coronavirus in China is rapidly evolving, with more aggressive control measures locally and lots of planning elsewhere. Recently, snakes were suggested as the origin of this virus, which was surprising and contrary to the assumption that this would be traced back to bats.

Information (as well as speculation) now seems to be flowing more rapidly with this outbreak, and the snake hypothesis has been challenged by many since it came out. Click here for a more detailed discussion of the links between this novel coronavirus, bats and snakes (or not), for those who are interested.

I’m sure we’ll see much more genetic analysis of this virus by many different groups, but I suspect it will keep coming back to bats as the source. How it made it to humans will still be a big question, since it’s quite likely there was a different species that bridged bats and humans (as was the case with raccoon dogs and civets with SARS).