SARS-Cov2 was first detected in December 2019, in the city of Wuhan in China. The ground zero for the viral outbreak is thought to be a market there that sold wild animals for human consumption called The Wuhan Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. It was shut down in January in response to the pandemic.
Then the following month, China declared an immediate and “comprehensive” ban on the trade and consumption of wild animals. A few animals have been identified as possible carriers of the novel coronavirus – including the highly endangered pangolin and bats – all of which are sold at these wildlife markets.
Unfortunately, it appears as new cases of COVID-19 continue to decline in China, markets across the country (and other countries) are non-compliant, and still in business busy as ever. Thousands of citizens have begun to pour back into these animal trading grounds to buy rabbits, bats, dogs, and more despite the coronavirus outbreak.
The Daily Mail reported about a medicine seller at a market in Dongguan, southern China, for example, who has been seen advertising lizards, snakes, toads, and bats to assist with common ailments. A correspondent to the publication who visited the wildlife market said:
The markets have gone back to operating in exactly the same way as they did before coronavirus. The only difference is that security guards try to stop anyone taking pictures, which would never have happened before.
COVID-19 isn’t the first virus to be linked to wildlife markets. The SARS outbreak in 2003 was also believed to have originated there. The University of Hong Kong had a study published in 2007 in which the researchers describe the culture of dining from these markets as a “time bomb” for a new virus.
They wrote:
Coronaviruses are well known to undergo genetic recombination, which may lead to new genotypes and outbreaks. The presence of a large reservoir of SARS-CoV-like viruses in horseshoe bats, together with the culture of eating exotic mammals in southern China, is a time bomb.
The current global tally of COVID-19 cases has reached over a million, with deaths soaring past 59,000 already. And while China claims they’ve been successful in suppressing the virus, other places around the world like Italy and the US have not been successful, and the numbers of cases continue to rise.
