Even before COVID-19 swept across the globe this year, coronaviruses were on scientists’ radar as pathogens that could one day ignite a pandemic. They’d threatened to before—in 2002–03, the SARS virus infected 8,000 people in more than two dozen countries and killed almost 800—and they checked off several specific boxes that emerging infectious disease specialists worry about in a virus. But they’re not the only group of viruses that researchers are concerned about.
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