China is guarding ancient caves where bats infected with coronavirus variants once lived in an attempt to control research into the outbreak, The Associated Press reported.
The caves, located in China's southern Yunnan Province, are thought to hold the key to understanding how the novel coronavirus evolved in bats. They have yielded information about other coronaviruses before.
In 2017, scientists tracked down the bats responsible for the 2003 SARS outbreak there. The region also played host to the 2012 discovery of RaTG13, a close variant of the coronavirus, which a study in February found to share 96% of its genetic makeup.
But China is taking steps to safeguard the site and control who gets access, The AP said, adding that a team of its journalists were tailed by security services and refused entry into one of the caves.
Authorities also confiscated samples taken by a team of scientists on a recent trip to the caves and police blocked access to roads and sites around the caves in late November, the AP said.
On a recent visit, the BBC reported that "unidentified men told us their job was to keep us out" and that a truck was abandoned in the road to block their convoy.
Some scientists are allowed in though most are affiliated with the Chinese military, the AP said.
All research papers based on evidence from the caves must be submitted to a task force overseen by the government in Beijing "under direct orders from President Xi Jinping."
Xi Jinping wearing a suit and tie© Getty
Bats are well known for carrying a plethora of viruses that do not make them sick. A 2019 study found that one bat can carry more than 200 coronaviruses.
Another coronavirus was discovered in the bats from the Yunnan caves in 2019, as Business Insider's Aylin Woodward previously reported.
The study published in the journal Current Biology identified a previously unknown coronavirus named RmYN02 "that's 97.1% similar to SARS-CoV-2" that was found between May and October 2019.
Many of the samples taken from the caves have been transferred to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the BBC said, a facility at the center of a baseless conspiracy theory that accused it of leaking the coronavirus from a lab.
The lab denies the theory.
