Wild Game Markets Once Again Believed to be Source of Exposure to Virus

As has been widely reported, the live animal “wildlife” markets in Huanan, Wuhan, is believed to be the source of the recent outbreak of coronavirus in China.   Wildlife markets, which are especially prevalent in southern China,  are part vanity and part homeopathy, enabling affluent customers to “show off” by consuming rare and exotic wildlife, procured at great expense. and other customers to obtain alleged healing benefits from the consumption of not-widely-available wildlife.   The markets are also very profitable and market owners, driven by the lure of the premium pricing they obtain on the sale of wildlife, tout their products as sources of protein and as revenue generators in impoverished regions. 

These markets, which sometimes sell live snakes, turtles, bamboo rats, guinea pigs, palm civets and other unlikely species for human consumption,  continue to thrive notwithstanding well established findings of pathogenic risk, most prominently, that they were also the source of the SARS outbreak, some 17 years ago.  SARS affected thousands of people around the world, ultimately leading to more than 800 deaths.  While researchers have not been able to casually link the new coronavirus to a specific wildlife transmission route, they believe that it originated in bats and then jumped to a mammal (they have not identified the mammal in the chain yet).   In the aftermath of SARS, the authorities banned the sale of the illness-causing civets but, within months of the epidemics peak, the ban was lifted and sales began anew.   

While researchers investigate the causal chain, the new coronavirus epidemic is rapidly worsening in China and around the world, with the New York Times reporting at least 1370 cases and 56 deaths.  The economic damage of the outbreak continues to mount, as well.   Wuhan’s 11 million residents are on “lockdown,” tourism is at full stop and the municipal government is racing to build a second temporary hospital (expected to be operational by February 3).  Temples, Shanghai’s Disneyland, and even the Forbidden City were closed over the Lunar New Year holiday. 

~~ David Walsh