It may have started with a bat in a cave. But human activity set it loose
The latest new virus that has captured the world’s horrified attention is known as “nCoV-2019.” The name, picked by the Chinese scientists who identified the virus, is short for “novel coronavirus of 2019”. It reflects the fact that the virus was first recognised to have infected humans late last year — in a seafood and live-animal market in Wuhan — and that it belongs to the coronavirus family, a notorious group.
The SARS epidemic of 2002-3, which infected 8,098 people worldwide, killing 774, was caused by a coronavirus. So was the MERS outbreak that began in 2012 and still lingers. Despite the new virus’s name though, nCoV-2019 isn’t as novel as you might think. Something like it was found years ago, in a cave in Yunnan, a province roughly 1,000 miles southwest of Wuhan, by perspicacious researchers who noted its existence with concern. The fast spread of nCoV-2019 is startling — but not unforeseeable.
That the virus emerged from a non-human animal, probably a bat, and possi