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There have been lots of hypothesis about the origin of the SARS-Cov-2 virus and to date we don’t know exactly how it was transmitted to humans. A WHO expert team should be soon carrying out investigations on the subject in China, once they get authorisations by the Chinese authorities. In the meantime, Peng Zhou’s team from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, is conducting research on some animals such as minks and other mustelids that could be the intermediate species between bats and humans. Indeed, a study conducted by Oude Munnink et al. in 16 mink farms in the Netherlands has shown that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infects minks and can be transmitted back to humans.

Links to the related articles:

Peng Zhou et al.: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6525/120

Oude Munnink et al.: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6525/172