Wildlife farms in southern China likely source of Covid pandemic, WHO expert says

19-03-2021

An expert at the World Health Organisation (WHO) rejected the possibility that Covid-19 emerged in a lab and claimed that wildlife farms in China are likely the source of the novel coronavirus pandemic. Peter Daszak, a member of the WHO team that travelled to China to probe the origin of Covid-19, told an American news agency that the officials found new evidence suggesting that wildlife farms in southern China were supplying animals to vendors at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan -- where the early Covid-19 outbreak emerged. According to the report, Daszak said the Chinese government thought those wildlife farms "were the most probable pathway for a coronavirus in bats in southern China to reach humans in Wuhan". "China promoted the farming of wildlife as a way to alleviate rural populations out of poverty...They [wildlife farms] take exotic animals, like civets, porcupines, pangolins, raccoon dogs and bamboo rats, and they breed them in captivity," Daszak was quoted as saying.

WORLD HEALTH BODY EXPECTED TO RELEASE REPORT SOON
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The WHO is expected to release a report on the team's investigative findings in the coming weeks, the report said. The WHO delegation had visited China to probe the origin of Covid-19 in January this year. According to Daszak, China had shut down wildlife farms in February 2020, "likely because the Chinese government thought that they were part of the transmission pathway from bats to humans", Daszak said. The government had then sent out instructions to farmers about how to bury, kill or burn the animals in a way that wouldn't spread disease, Daszak said. Moreover, NPR reported that many of these farms breed animals that can carry coronaviruses -- including civets, cats and pangolins -- and most of them are located in or near the Yunnan province in southern China, where scientists earlier discovered a bat virus that was 96 per cent similar to SARS-CoV-2. "I do think that SARS-CoV-2 first got into people in South China. It's looking that way," Daszak was quoted as saying. Meanwhile, Linfa Wang, a virologist who studies bat viruses at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, said, "There was massive transmission going on at that market for sure." Therefore, the WHO team believe that the wildlife farms provided a perfect conduit between a coronavirus-infected bat in Yunnan (or neighbouring Myanmar) and a Wuhan animal market, NPR reported.