Australian Prime Minister warns about the danger posed by Wet Markets in China

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison called on the World Health Organization and the United Nations to step up its efforts to ban ‘Wet Markets” in China, where wild animals are traded for their meat.

Talking to a local broadcaster, the Australian Prime Minister said,

“Wet markets were a very real and significant problem wherever they exist. This virus started in China and went round the world. And that’s how it started.

We all know that. And these wet markets can be a real problem when it comes to what can occur in those markets. And I think from a world health point of view, this is something the World Health Organisation should do something about. I mean, all this money that comes out of the UN and the World Health Organisation.”

https://youtu.be/yldWAXJWzHU?t=28

What is a Wet Market and Why a Chinese wet market is different?

Wet Markets are open-air markets where traders sell fresh produce, seafood, and meat. But the wet markets in China are a little different due to the presence of wild and exotic animals slaughtered for their meat.

In a paper titled, Infectious diseases emerging from Chinese wet-markets: zoonotic origins of severe respiratory viral infections, authors Woo PC, Lau SK, and Yuen KY explain the threat posed by these wet markets.

“In Chinese wet-markets, unique epicenters for transmission of potential viral pathogens, new genes may be acquired or existing genes modified through various mechanisms such as genetic reassortment, recombination and mutation. The wet-markets, at closer proximity to humans, with high viral burden or strains of higher transmission efficiency, facilitate transmission of the viruses to humans”.

The paper was published way back in 2006.

Had the world and the Chinese policymakers taken note, we could have averted the catastrophe that’s gobbling up lives in every corner of the world.

At the time of writing this article, there are more than 1.033 million infected with Coronavirus across 181 countries, leaving 54,369 people dead. It’s perplexing to even think where the death toll will be when we bring…