Sampling strategies and pre-pandemic surveillance gaps for bat coronaviruses

Abstract

The emergence of SARS-CoV-2, and the challenge of pinpointing its ecological and evolutionary context, has highlighted the importance of evidence-based strategies for monitoring viral dynamics in bat reservoir hosts. Here, we compiled the results of 93,877 samples collected from bats across 111 studies between 1996 and 2018, and used these to develop an unprecedented open database, with over 2,400 estimates of coronavirus infection prevalence or seroprevalence at the finest methodological, spatiotemporal, and phylogenetic level of detail possible from public records. These data revealed a high degree of heterogeneity in viral prevalence, reflecting both real spatiotemporal variation in viral dynamics and the effect of variation in sampling design. Phylogenetically controlled meta-analysis revealed that the most significant determinant of successful viral detection was repeat sampling (i.e., returning to the same site multiple times); however, fewer than one in five studies longitudinally collected and reported data. Viral detection was also more successful in some seasons and from certain tissues, but was not improved by the use of euthanasia, indicating that viral detection may not be improved by terminal sampling. Finally, we found that prior to the pandemic, sampling effort was highly concentrated in ways that reflected concerns about zoonotic risk, leaving several broad geographic regions (e.g., South Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and most of Sub-Saharan Africa) and bat subfamilies (e.g., Stenodermatinae and Pteropodinae) measurably undersampled. These gaps constitute a notable vulnerability for global health security and will likely be a future barrier to contextualizing the origin of novel zoonotic coronaviruses.