Introduction

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was reported for the first time in December 2019, Wuhan, China (Khan et al., 2020). The COVID-19 then rapidly spread from the epicentre globally, and now characterized as a pandemic by the World Health Organization (World Health Organization, 2020). The high transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2, the lack of specific treatment and vaccines, and the unstoppable spread of infection have recently caused global health emergency, fear, and psychological stress among the public (Cohen and Kupferschmidt, 2020). Like SARS-CoV-2, other viruses including Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (SARS-CoV), Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV), Marburg virus, and Ebola virus, have caused major outbreaks in history. These outbreaks caused large numbers of fatalities, morbidities, and cost billions of dollars, worldwide (Allocati et al., 2016; Fan et al., 2019). Bats are reported as a natural reservoir for these viruses, especially coronaviruses (CoVs) which constitute approximately, 31% of their virome (Allocati et al., 2016; Afelt et al., 2018). These viruses are transmitted to humans either directly or via intermediate hosts (Chan et al., 2013; Allocati et al., 2016). Furthermore, higher species diversity (over 1400), longer lifespan (over 30 years), resistance to viral infection, and migration make them a huge reservoir for pathogens and give them higher chances to transmit pathogens to other species in vast areas (Allocati et al., 2016; Frick et al., 2019; Banerjee et al., 2020). In 207 bat species, 5717 bat-associated animal viruses have been detected in 77 different countries (Allocati et al., 2016). However, the elusive and nocturnal habits make them difficult to be studied (Frick et al., 2019) therefore, there could be more deadly viruses with epidemic and pandemic potentials if other bats species are studied.

Keywords

Ethics, social science, economics

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