A recent disease outbreak alert released by the World Health Organization (WHO) reported four laboratory-confirmed cases of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) from three regions in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Researchers performed bat sarbecovirus isolation experiments using Rhinolophus cornutus bats from several regions in Japan that were phylogenetically situated in the same cluster of viruses related to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).