According to LIU Yahong, president of the university, a research team analyzed more than 1,000 metagenome samples of wild animals and found pangolins as the most likely intermediate host. Sequence analysis of coronavirus strains assembled from metagenomes revealed that Betacoronavirus occurred in 70% of the pangolins analyzed, and the sequence was 99 percent identical to that of infected people in the recent coronavirus outbreak. The virus structure obtained by electron microscopy was also very similar.

Xinhua news release, February 7, 2020