Bats, viruses and pandemics

I started my research on bat-borne viruses in 1994. In the last three decades, we have had multiple zoonotic diseases outbreaks caused by bat-borne viruses or viruses with ancestral lineages in bats:  Hendra (1994), Nipah (1998/9), SARS (2002/3), MERS (2012), large scale Ebola virus outbreak (2014) and COVID-19 (2019/20).  Bats are now known as one of, if not, the most important reservoirs of different viruses, yet bats carry these viruses in a largely asymptomatic manner.  Bats are also the longest living mammal relative to body size. In this presentation, I will share my journey and lessons learnt from studying bat viruses and bat biology in the context of pandemic preparedness and OneHealth approach to infectious disease investigation and prevention.