As Covid-19 drives the planet batsh*t crazy, Russia to study the feces of its own bat population to look for coronaviruses

With the world in the grip of a pandemic possibly caused by Chinese bats, Russia wants to make sure its own can’t start another. Thus, a new study will check the country's bat population for the presence of coronaviruses.

National health watchdog Roszdravnadzor's Institute of Epidemiology will test nocturnal flying mammals from various regions of the country, including Moscow, Volgograd, and the Black Sea coast, enabling the scientists to determine how common coronaviruses are in different species.

The researchers plan to analyze more than 1,500 individuals by checking fecal samples, using a “high-performance sequencing method to obtain information about the complete genome sequences” of any viruses found.

Although it is unknown where Covid-19 originated, many believe the source to be Chinese bats. In April, WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib told a Geneva news briefing that the evidence suggests the virus “has an animal origin,” and “most likely has its ecological reservoir in bats.”

Others, such as US President Donald Trump, have accused China of artificially creating the virus in a laboratory.

As of August 25, there have been at least 23,679,320 global cases of Covid-19, with 966,189 confirmed in Russia. The country with the most instances of coronavirus is the US (5,742,308), followed by Brazil (3,622,861) and India (3,167,323).

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