By this point, the evidence is clear: The Covid-19 pandemic can be traced back to a bat virus. The same was true for the 2003 SARS coronavirus outbreak. In such outbreaks, we are unlikely to be able to determine whether the spillover happened because someone ate or handled an infected bat, was exposed to a bat's bodily fluids in a cave or some other way, or came into contact with another animal that had been infected by a bat. Even if human contact with a virus happened in a lab, the virus still would have originally come from a bat. What's important is that we don't need to know all of the details in order to take meaningful action.
Bats are known reservoirs for a wide range of viruses, including Marburg filoviruses, Hendra and Nipah paramyxoviruses, rabies, and coronaviruses such as the one that causes MERS, or Middle East respiratory syndrome. Ebolaviruses are strongly suspected to come from fruit bats.
