Rodent species as possible SARS-CoV-2 spills

The current worldwide outbreak of COVID-19 is associated with a novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. This outbreak has been tentatively associated with a seafood market in Wuhan, China, where the sale of wild animals may be the source of the zoonotic infection. When the epidemic, which began on December 12, 2019, had caused 2,794 laboratory-confirmed infections, including 80 deaths, as of January 26, 2020, whole-genome sequences were obtained from five patients early in the outbreak. The sequences were nearly identical and shared 79.6% sequence identity with SARS-CoV. In addition, SARS-CoV-2 has been shown to be 96% genome-wide identical to a bat coronavirus. Phylogenetic analysis of the virus spike proteins indicates that SARS-CoV-2 is classified into several small subclades, including a bat coronavirus RaTG13, suggesting that bats are a likely natural origin. Refined alignment of the spike proteins at NCBI showed that several sequences are conserved with high similarity within SARS-CoV-2 and/or SARS-CoV isolates from Rattus norvegicus and/or Mus musculus, suggesting that rodents may be intermediate reservoirs for SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV.