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To carry a higher proportion of viruses that have the ability to infect people. the question is really, why do we see some of these incredibly bad viruses coming out of bats? >> it was 7:00 p.m. on december 30th, 2019, when a package arrived at the wuhan institute of virology. in it, medical samples from an infectious disease hospital. several patients there were suffering from atypical pneumonia. doctors suspected a possible novel coronavirus. dr. xi zhengli's cell phone rang shortly thereafter. >> she got a call from her boss who said drop whatever you're doing and come back to the lab right...

>> and the signal to all sorts of cells that have not become infected, a virus is here. turn on your defense system. >> and typically this manifests in inflammation. >> the in humans inflammation helps fight fever. too long, it can do more harm than good. it can even cause death. >> typically more than half the damage that results in disease tends to be the damage of the immune system attacking the disease itself. >> that's how the disease stops. >> but bats' immune systems don't respond the same way as humans. >> it seems that bats are able to mount robust immune responses but not experience ...

>> reporter: omar jimenez, cnn, chicago. >> omar, thank you so much for that. a programming note for all of you. you can say good-bye to 2020 finally and hello to 2021 with anderson cooper and andy cohen live from times square new year's eve starting at 8:00 p.m. eastern on cnn. thank you so much for joining me. i'm kate bolduan. happy new year. merry christmas. the cnn special "bats: the mystery behind covid" starts now. >> announcer: the following is a cnn special report. bats throughout human history seem to have this image as evil, dark and dangerous. they seem to have got this bad impre...

>> reporter: omar jimenez, cnn, chicago. >> omar, thank you so much for that. a programming note for all of you. you can say good-bye to 2020 finally and hello to 2021 with anderson cooper and andy cohen live from times square new year's eve starting at 8:00 p.m. eastern on cnn. thank you so much for joining me. i'm kate bolduan. happy new year. merry christmas. the cnn special "bats: the mystery behind covid" starts now. >> announcer: the following is a cnn special report. bats throughout human history seem to have this image as evil, dark and dangerous. they seem to have got this bad impre...

>> the same adaptation also carries virus. >> it doesn't appear to get sick or very sick when they're carrying viruses that can be deadly in other people and animals. >> so, could studying bat immunology help us humans create possible treatments to fight this current and future pandemic? >> what do you think is the greatest challenge in term of finding a treatment or cure for these virus? >> to my mind, the greatest challenge, the number of unknown viruses that are out there. we think there are about 1.7 million unknown viruses of the type that can get into people. and we've got to get ready f...