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A member of the WHO research team believes that wildlife farms in southern China are likely the source of the pandemic.
China has closed wildlife farms since February 2020, according to Peter Daszak, disease ecologist at the EcoHealth Alliance, a member of the Medical Organization delegation. World Economy (WHO) came to China this year.
During the trip, Daszak said the WHO research team found new evidence that these farms were supplying the animals to the southern Chinese seafood wholesale market in Wuhan.
Peter Ben Embarek (right), leader of the WHO nCoV origin research team, in Wuhan, China, on February 4. Picture: AFP.
The Chinese government’s response is a strong sign that Beijing sees these farms as more likely to be a route for the spread of the corona virus from bats to humans in Wuhan.
The farms, including one in Yunnan province, are part of a project the Chinese government has been promoting for 20 years. “They took strange animals like civets, porcupines, pangolins, badgers and put them in captivity,” Daszak said.
The WHO plans to publish the results of the research in the next two weeks. Daszak appreciated what the research team discovered.
“China promotes wildlife farming as a means to reduce poverty in rural areas,” Daszak said. These farms have contributed to the Chinese government’s goal of closing the rural and urban gap last year.
“The show was very successful,” Daszak said. “In 2016, they had 14 million people working for the farm. This industry is worth $ 70 billion.”
On February 24, 2020, as soon as the outbreak in Wuhan subsided, the Chinese government made important decisions about these farms.
“What China did at that time was very important,” Daszak said. “They have declared that they will stop raising wild animals for food.”
The government closed the farms. “They send instructions to farmers on how to dispose of animals safely, how to bury, kill or burn them, ways not to spread the disease.”
Why is the Chinese government doing this? According to Daszak, these farms could be the ideal point of transmission, where the virus is transmitted from a bat to another animal and then to humans.
“I think nCoV is starting to infect people in southern China. So far, all the findings have shown this,” Daszak said.
Many farms are located in or around southern China’s Yunnan province, where virologists found a genetically 96% bat virus as nCoV. Additionally, these farms raise animals that have been shown to contain corona viruses such as civets and pangolins.
Finally, during a business trip to China, Daszak said the WHO research team found new evidence that these farms were supplying wildlife to the South China seafood market, where the first Covid outbreak occurred.
The market closed on December 31, 2019 after it was found to be related to mysterious cases such as pneumonia.
“Certainly this market is the place to spread and infect massively,” said Linfa Wang, a virus scientist specializing in bat viruses at the DUKE School of Medicine at the National University of Singapore. He is also a member of the WHO research team. Wang said that after an outbreak in the Hainan market, Chinese scientists went to the market to search for the corona virus.
“In the area where the live animals were sold, they found a lot of positive samples,” Wang said. “They even brought in two isolated live virus samples.”
Porcupine farming area at China Agricultural University in Wuhan in May 2020. Image: China Agricultural University
As a result, Daszak and other members of the WHO research team believe that wildlife farms provide a perfect path between CoV-infected bats in Yunnan (or neighboring Myanmar) and the animal market in Wuhan.
“China closes this road for some reason,” Daszak said. “The reason is that in February 2020, they think this is the most likely route for the virus to spread to Wuhan. Most likely.”
The next step, he says, is to specifically identify which animal is a carrier of the virus and where it started on many farms in southern China.
Hong Hanh (Follow, continue NPR)
