Résumé
The fight against viral infectious diseases remains a challenging and endless task despite the tremendous efforts and significant advances in public healthcare. The COVID-19 crisis has demonstrated the need for surveillance of potentially zoonotic viruses in wildlife in order to predict future spillovers and to prevent outbreaks. Bats are major reservoirs of zoonotic viruses, including coronaviruses. Their extraordinary genetic characteristics (high rate of mutations, ability to recombination, poor fidelity of the RNA polymerase…) allows coronaviruses to easily cross the species barrier between animals and to spillover to humans. In Camargue, southern France, the high promiscuity between humans and bats, hosting the roofs of houses, increases the risk of virus transmission through respiratory route. In order to investigate coronavirus infection in bats and to assess the risk of bat-to-human transmission, we collected guanos throughout the Tour du Valat park. The results reported the detection of virus from the Alphacoronavirus genus in Pipistrellus pygmeaus bat species, with a prevalence as high as 50%. Moreover, genomic sequences detected were very different from known human coronavirus, suggesting low zoonotic risk. However, since humans are often infected from bats through intermediate animal species, the investigation of coronavirus infection of the whole Camargue wildlife is required.