“Climate change made Corona 19”… Published by British and American researchers

[천지일보=이솜 기자] A study found that the novel coronavirus infection (Corona 19) was actually caused by climate change.

In the last 100 years, climate change in southern China’s Yunnan province, Myanmar and Laos has changed the environment to a good place for many bats, and the increase in wildlife trade has led to the appearance of deadly viruses that infect humans.

According to foreign media such as Forbes on the 14th, the results of such research by researchers at the University of Cambridge in the UK and at the University of Hawaii in the US were recently published in the international academic journal’Comprehensive Environmental Sciences’.

The researchers used records of temperature, precipitation, and cloud content to map vegetation changes from a century ago. Later, in the early 1900s, the habitat conditions of the world’s bat species were used to determine the distribution of bat species. Comparing this with the current distribution explains how many species of bats around the world have increased over the past century due to climate change.

As a result of the study, a large-scale plant type change was found in areas where COVID-19 may have occurred, such as Yunnan Province in southern China, Myanmar and Laos.

Climate change has transformed its natural habitat from tropical shrubland to tropical savannah and deciduous forests. This has created an environment suitable for many species of bats that feed on fruit and nectar, mainly in forests.

According to the study, an additional 40 species of bats have migrated to Yunnan province in southern China over the past 100 years, and more bats with about 100 species of coronavirus are inhabiting.

The number of coronavirus in a region is closely related to the number of bat species. The bat’s immune system is a reservoir of new mutations and has the infamous ability to carry even asymptomatic viruses. Bats around the world have about 3,000 coronavirus species, with an average of 2.7 viruses per individual.

The increase in the number of bats in certain areas due to climate change could increase the likelihood of transmission or evolution of the coronavirus, which is harmful to humans. Most coronaviruses in bats are not transmitted to humans, but it is very likely that some coronaviruses that infect humans originated in bats. MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome), SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), and Corona 19 are representative.

Areas identified as rich in bat species due to climate change also have pangolins, which are believed to have served as intermediate hosts for SARS-CoV-2. It is highly likely that the virus has migrated from bats to pangolins, and there is speculation that it may have since been sold in Wuhan’s wild markets.

The number of bats has also increased in regions around Central Africa, excluding Southeast Asia, and there have been regions in Central and South America that could become’hot spots’ for bat-borne diseases.

“As climate change changed habitats, (bat) species migrated to other areas and carried the virus,” said Robert Bayer, a researcher at Cambridge University. “The interaction has been made possible, allowing harmful viruses to be transmitted or evolved.”

“The fact that climate change can accelerate the transmission of wild animal fungi to humans should be an alarm to reduce global emissions,” said co-author of the study, Professor Camilo Mora of the University of Hawaii.

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