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Ever since the virus now known as SARS-CoV-2 was first identified and sequenced by researchers in China a year ago, a tidal wave of research on the pathogen and its associated disease, COVID-19, has swamped the scientific literature. Indeed, an analysis posted as a preprint last month found that more than 84,000 papers related to COVID-19 were published in the first 11 months of 2020.
Even given that output and the recent rollout of vaccines against the disease, researchers who study the virus aren’t ready to put it on ice and move on to other problems. Here are some of the key areas where we’re likely to see advances in understanding this year.
Teasing out SARS-CoV-2’s origin is important, says disease ecologist Jonathan Epstein of EcoHealth Alliance, because knowing how the virus got into humans could yield clues about how to avoid future spillovers. The SARS ...
