The evening of February 9, Hubei Province, the new coronavirus epidemic prevention and control headquarters held the 19th press conference, focusing on the new coronavirus epidemic prevention and control of scientific research and study. At the meeting, Huazhong Agricultural University Professor Chen Huanchun said: analysis found that the new coronavirus belongs to the SARS coronavirus. The conclusion, attracted skepticism. In this regard, academician Zhong Nanshan said in an interview with the media: the SARS coronavirus is a proper noun, is specifically referring to the virus of acute respiratory syndrome, it (and the new coronavirus) is not the same thing, 2019 the new coronavirus is a different kind of virus, are all belong to the coronavirus. Xu Wenbo, director of the Institute of Virus of the Chinese CDC, also said: the new coronavirus is a new virus, not the SARS virus. Subsequently, Chen Huanchun said in an interview with the media after the conference that the statement was a slip of the tongue: “I’m really sorry, it’s a slip of the tongue, I dropped two words. It should have read “The new coronavirus is a SARS-related coronavirus”. Prof. Chen Huanchun’s reading at the conference was also posted on today’s “Hubei Authoritative Release” WeChat public number, and the error can be found by comparing (see screenshot). What is SARS-associated coronavirus? Less “related” two words, the meaning is very different The new coronavirus belongs to the SARS-related coronavirus, the conclusion is based on the Wuhan Institute of Virus Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shi Zhengli team’s work. Shi Zhengli said in a media interview: SARS-related coronavirus, which is the name of the virus species. The new coronavirus uses the same receptor as the SARS coronavirus to enter host cells, and possesses 87.1 percent similarity to the SARS-associated viruses found in bats and 79.5 percent similarity to the SARS virus. The similarity to a coronavirus found in a bat sample from Yunnan was 96%. The pangolin strain has 99 percent sequence similarity to the current strain that infects humans. Multiple research teams have investigated the correlation between the new crown and SARS viruses. on January 22, the National Genome Sciences Data Center officially released the 2019 Novel Coronavirus Resource Bank, which was analyzed and showed 80% sequence similarity between the genomes of the new crown and SARS viruses. Similarly, on January 29, a study published in The Lancet by Tan Wenjie et al. of the CDC noted that, compared with the SARS virus, the 2019-nCov is more similar to two bat coronaviruses collected in Zhoushan, Zhejiang Province, with 88 percent identity. Zhu Huachen, an associate professor at the University of Hong Kong’s School of Public Health, said in a previous interview with the media that by analyzing the gene sequences, it can be initially determined that its similarity with the entire genome of SARS is around 80 percent, but the similarity of different gene segments varies, between 60 and 90 percent, respectively. “It belongs to the same group (i.e., 2bgroup) as SARS and is a novel ‘SARS-like’ or ‘SARS-like’ coronavirus.” David Robertson, a professor at the Center for Virus Research at the University of Glasgow in the UK, pointed out in an interview with China News Weekly that it couldn’t possibly be SARS, but that the new coronavirus comes from the same subtype of virus, sarbecovirus, as SARS, so it could be said to be a SARS-related coronavirus. After reading so many studies, a general explanation: the new coronavirus and the SARS coronavirus, both are coronaviruses, just different coronaviruses. The two coronaviruses, have a lot of similarities, especially attacking the same cellular pathway into the body. Source: Dr. Yurai