A team of researchers at the University of Cambridge has revealed that climate change may have played a direct role in SARS-CoV-2 causing the coronavirus pandemic.
The study, published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, has identified major changes in the type of vegetation in the southern Chinese region known as Yunnan, and also in the regions of Myanmar and Laos.
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Climate changes such as rising temperatures, sunlight and atmospheric carbon dioxide have led to declines in plant and tree growth and have also altered natural habitats from tropical shrubland to tropical savannah and deciduous forest.
This, according to the researchers, created a suitable environment for many species of bats found in the woods. The research has also stated that the number of coronaviruses is also related to the number of bat species present in the area.
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“Climate change over the last century has made the habitat in China’s southern Yunnan region suitable for more bat species,” said Robert Beyer, a researcher at Cambridge University and the first author of the study. Understanding how the global distribution of bat species has shifted as a result of climate change may be an important step in reconstructing the origins of the Covid-19 revolution. “
With a change in the habitats, some species traveled from one place to another and took the viruses with them and may have begun to make changes to the existing viruses, leading to more dangerous viruses. , coronavirus width.
“As climate change changed habitats, species left some areas and migrated into others – taking the viruses with them. This was not only changing the regions where viruses are present. present but it is more likely that they allowed new interactions between animals and viruses, causing more harmful viruses to be transmitted or evolved, “Beyer said.