Tens of thousands of people in Southeast Asia could be infected with coronaviruses related to SARS-CoV-2 each year, a study published yesterday (August 9) in Nature Communications estimates. The research, which first appeared as a preprint last September, analyzed the geographic ranges of 26 bat species and found their habitat overlapped regions where half a billion people live, representing an area larger than 5 million square kilometers, reports Reuters. Analyzing that data along with estimates of the number of people who exhibited detectable coronavirus antibodies predicted that approximately 66,000 potential infections occur each year.
Stephanie Seifert, a virus ecologist at Washington State University in Pullman who was not involved in the research, tells Nature that the work “highlights how often these viruses have the opportunity to spillover.”
The study coauthors considered the geographic ranges of bats known to host SARS-related viruses—primarily horseshoe bats (family Rhinolophidae) and Old World leaf-nosed bats ...
