2019_nCoV/SARS-CoV-2: rapid classification of betacoronaviruses and identification of Traditional Chinese Medicine as potential origin of zoonotic coronaviruses

Wassenaar, T.M.; Zou, Y.

The use of bats in TCM is of great concern, and the use of the Greater horseshoe bat, Rhinolophus ferrumequinum, is of particular interest. The faeces of this bat (Y e ming shÇŽ in Chinese, marketed as Vespertilionis, see for instance https://www.bestplant.shop/products/yeming-sha-bat-feces-bat-dung-bat-guano) is used to cure eye conditions, while body parts are dried and added to wine or ground into a powder for oral intake as a means to 'detoxify' the body. Both practices could be highly risky in case an animal was infected with a coronavirus, particularly the first use, as the virus can be present in faeces and can enter a host via the eye. We speculate that a live or recently deceased infected bat species was handled by traders because of its value in TCM, and that such an infected individual, or the still infective bat or bat products, may have been the route by which the virus entered the exotic meat market in Wuhan. Alternatively, during the trade chain, a host jump occurred between an infected bat (handled for TCM purposes) and another mammal, that then was the source of infection. Less likely, because the material is usually dried significantly, the outbreak may have started by medicinal use of batderived, contaminated TCM material. In this respect it is interesting to note that the first known onset of symptoms (on 1 December 2019) were observed in a patient with no known epidemiological links to the Wuhan food market (Huang et al. 2020) .