It was discovered along with SL-CoV Rs3367, which was the first bat SARS-like coronavirus shown to directly infect a human cell line.

[2] From April 2011 to September 2012, researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology collected 117 anal swabs and fecal samples of bats from a Chinese rufous horseshoe bats (Rhinolophus sinicus) colony in Kunming City (Yunnan Province in south-western China).

[2] In 2013, bat SARS-like coronavirus Rs3367 was shown to be able to directly infect the human HeLa cell line.

The strain of Rs3367 that infected the human cells was named “Bat SARS-like coronavirus WIV”.

[2] In 2015, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Wuhan Institute of Virology conducted research showing that SHC014 could be made to infect the human HeLa cell line, through the use of reverse genetics to create a chimeric virus consisting of a surface protein of SHC014 and the backbone of a SARS coronavirus.