This sequence has been submitted to GISAID ( ) (accession number EPI_ISL_402124).
High genome coverage was obtained by remapping the total reads to this genome (Extended Data Fig. By de novo assembly and targeted PCR, we obtained a 29,891-base-pair CoV genome that shared 79.6% sequence identity to SARS-CoV BJ01 (GenBank accession number AY278488.2). Of the 10,038,758 total reads-of which 1,582 total reads were retained after filtering of reads from the human genome-1,378 (87.1%) sequences matched the sequence of SARSr-CoV (Fig. One sample (WIV04), collected from the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF), was analysed by metagenomics analysis using next-generation sequencing to identify potential aetiological agents. We found five samples to be PCR-positive for CoVs. As a laboratory investigating CoV, we first used pan-CoV PCR primers to test these samples 13, given that the outbreak occurred in winter and in a market-the same environment as SARS infections. Samples from seven patients with severe pneumonia (six of whom are sellers or deliverymen from the seafood market), who were admitted to the intensive care unit of Wuhan Jin Yin-Tan Hospital at the beginning of the outbreak, were sent to the laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) for the diagnosis of the causative pathogen (Extended Data Table 1). It appears that most of the early cases had contact history with the original seafood market however, the disease has now progressed to be transmitted by human-to-human contact. The disease was determined to be caused by virus-induced pneumonia by clinicians according to clinical symptoms and other criteria, including a rise in body temperature, decreases in the number of lymphocytes and white blood cells (although levels of the latter were sometimes normal), new pulmonary infiltrates on chest radiography and no obvious improvement after treatment with antibiotics for three days. Disease onset may result in progressive respiratory failure owing to alveolar damage (as observed by transverse chest computerized-tomography images) and even death. Typical clinical symptoms of these patients are fever, dry cough, breathing difficulties (dyspnoea), headache and pneumonia. This disease outbreak-which started from a local seafood market-has grown substantially to infect 2,761 people in China, is associated with 80 deaths and has led to the infection of 33 people in 10 additional countries as of 26 January 2020 12.
Here we report on a series of cases caused by an unidentified pneumonia disease outbreak in Wuhan, Hubei province, central China. It has generally been thought that SARSr-CoV-which is mainly found in bats-could cause a future disease outbreak 10, 11. Notably, we confirmed that 2019-nCoV uses the same cell entry receptor-angiotensin converting enzyme II (ACE2)-as SARS-CoV.Ĭoronaviruses have caused two large-scale pandemics in the past two decades, SARS and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) 8, 9.
In addition, 2019-nCoV virus isolated from the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid of a critically ill patient could be neutralized by sera from several patients. Pairwise protein sequence analysis of seven conserved non-structural proteins domains show that this virus belongs to the species of SARSr-CoV. Furthermore, we show that 2019-nCoV is 96% identical at the whole-genome level to a bat coronavirus. The sequences are almost identical and share 79.6% sequence identity to SARS-CoV. Full-length genome sequences were obtained from five patients at an early stage of the outbreak. The epidemic, which started on 12 December 2019, had caused 2,794 laboratory-confirmed infections including 80 deaths by 26 January 2020. Here we report the identification and characterization of a new coronavirus (2019-nCoV), which caused an epidemic of acute respiratory syndrome in humans in Wuhan, China.
Previous studies have shown that some bat SARSr-CoVs have the potential to infect humans 5, 6, 7. Since the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) 18 years ago, a large number of SARS-related coronaviruses (SARSr-CoVs) have been discovered in their natural reservoir host, bats 1, 2, 3, 4.