In December 2019, several patients in Wuhan, China were reported to be suffering from unknown viral pneumonia. Soon after, more patients in that city were diagnosed with the same disease. On January 9, scientists identified a new virus as the cause of the mysterious disease. They found that the new virus belongs to a class of viruses called coronavirus, and so they named it SARS-CoV-2. The name comes from the disease it causes: severe acute respiratory syndrome; CoV stands for coronavirus, and the number 2 was added because it is the second coronavirus that causes a serious respiratory disease.
Next, scientists examined the DNA of the virus they recovered from a sick person and the results were surprising. They discovered that the new virus infecting humans is very similar to a coronavirus found in bats (96% similarity). This outcome led them to think that the virus must have jumped from bats to humans. But did SARS-CoV-2 jump directly from bats to humans? Or did it first infect an intermediate animal before it got to humans? So far, these questions remain unanswered, but scientists seem to agree that SARS-CoV-2 jumped from an animal to humans.

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