BEIJING -- A new study found that a small group of bats in eastern Thailand carried a coronavirus which matches the one that causes COVID-19, according to media reports reaching here.

The new virus was identified in the blood of five horseshoe bats in an artificial cave at a wildlife sanctuary, and researchers at Bangkok-based Chulalongkorn University found it shares 91.5 percent of the genetic code of SARS-CoV-2, Russia's Sputnik news agency quoted the study published on Tuesday by the journal Nature Communications as saying.

"We need to do more surveillance in animals," Wang Linfa of Singapore's Duke-NUS Medical School, who was involved in the study, told reporters. "In order to find the true origin (of COVID-19), the surveillance work needs to go beyond the border of China."