The report from Belarus suggests yak as intermediate host of SARS-CoV-2. The Delta variant has two deletions at positions 156 and 157, E and F, respectively. The E coincides to yak at that position, though yak has I for position 157. Interestingly, in human coronavirus HCoV-NL63, the yak sequence (E156, I157) happens thus: E155, I156.
Sep 2020 Belarus
Sep 2020 Belarus
SARS-CoV-2: Structural diversity, phylogeny, and potential animal host identification of spike glycoprotein - PubMed
To investigate the evolutionary history of the current pandemic outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), a total of 137 genomes of coronavirus strains with release dates between January 2019 and 25 March 2020, were analyzed. To investigate the potential...
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov