More details on likely evolutionary timescales behind bat-to-human COVID emergence. Interesting work from @robertson_lab @UofGlasgow @CVRinfo suggests 1) SARS2-lineage bat-CoVs have been circulating for few decades (in bats!)..... https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/coronaviruses-linked-sars-cov-2-have-circulating-bats-decades/
Coronaviruses linked to Sars-Cov-2 have been circulating in bats ‘for decades’, study finds

It's likely that viruses capable of infecting humans are common in bats, which has significant implications for efforts to prevent pandemics

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/coronaviruses-linked-sars-cov-2-have-circulating-bats-decades/
2) lots of recombination in these viruses making patterns of evolution confusing (agree w/ that!); 3) likely many more out there (also agree!), incl. in SARS2 lineage; 4) pangolin CoVs likely acquired from bats sometime in history + confounded by wildlife trade origins; ...
5) RaTG13 is a sister clade to SARS-CoV-2, not progenitor; 6) supports likely natural origin of SARS-CoV-2; 7) suggests need to conduct a lot more surveillance. Source paper here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-020-0771-4
Evolutionary origins of the SARS-CoV-2 sarbecovirus lineage responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic

In this manuscript, the authors address evolutionary questions on the emergence of SARS-CoV-2. They find that SARS-CoV-2 is not a recombinant of any sarbecoviruses detected to date, and that the bat...

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-020-0771-4
...& apologies for my quote in @Telegraph if RmYN02 is included in analysis after all... I do think authors agree that much deeper wildlife sampling is going to reveal lot of other bat-CoVs that might better identify some of the ancestral lineages & alter dates of divergence.
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