Novel coronaviruses belong to a group of coronaviruses, which are named for their morphology that resembles a crown when viewed under electron microscopy and usually reside in the respiratory or intestinal tracts of organisms. Currently, the source of novel coronaviruses appears to be wildlife. The novel coronavirus was genetically similar to a strain of coronavirus from a bat sample, with 96% sequence identity between the two viruses. The results suggest that bats may be the host of the novel coronavirus in nature. The novel coronavirus genome was found to be genome-wide compared with SARS coronavirus and MERS coronavirus, and an average of about 70% and about 40% sequence similarity was found, respectively.