Coronavirus in bats affecting humans is rare: ICMR

New Delhi, Apr 15: The coronavirus in bats affecting humans is a rare incident, maybe, once in a thousand years, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said on Wednesday.

"Coronavirus is also found in bats. In the research conducted in China, it was found that coronavirus might have originated due to mutation in bats and affected humans. There is another possibility that bats might have transmitted the virus to mammals called pangolin and from pangolins, it got transmitted to humans," said Dr Gangakhedkar.

Talking about recent research conducted by the ICMR on Indian species of bats, Dr Gangakhedkar said, "We also conducted research and surveillance on bats in order to check if emerging infectious diseases are found in bats, we learnt that there are two types of bats, which carry coronavirus. But it was not capable of affecting humans. It's rare, maybe once in 1000 years that the virus gets transmitted from bats to humans," said the ICMR chief scientist.

Scientists have detected coronaviruses in two species of bats from four states in India, an Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) study has revealed.

The researchers have tested throat samples of two bats species from seven states, of which samples from Kerala, Himachal Pradesh, Puducherry, and Tamil Nadu were found positive.

Samples from Karnataka, Chandigarh, Gujarat, Odisha, Punjab, and Telangana were negative.

Bats are believed to be reservoirs for a broad range of coronaviruses and are often transmitted to humans through an intermediate host.