US asks China to turn off wet markets to avoid further infection
11 April, 2020
Amidst the coronavirus pandemic, a bipartisan band of top US lawmakers have urged China to urgently turn off all of its operating wet market segments as that contain a probable to expose humans to health threats through the introduction of zoonotic disease.
A wet market markets fresh meat, fish, make, and different perishable goods as distinguished from "dry market segments". It gets its name from the floors being frequently wet from the spraying of clean produce and cleaning of meat and seafood stalls.
We write to urgently demand that China immediately close all operating wet marketplaces that have a potential to expose individuals to health threats through the launch of zoonotic disease in to the population, wrote the senators, found in a good letter to Chinese Ambassador to america Cui Tiankai.
A zoonotic disease is an illness which can be passed from an animal to a people.
Gao Fu, the director of China's Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, has acknowledged that the origin of the brand new coronavirus may be the wildlife sold illegally in a Wuhan (China) seafood market, they said.
A wet marketplace in the central Chinese town of Wuhan is believed to be the source of the coronavirus pandemic that started in December last year, crossing from animals to individuals.
"It is good documented that wet markets in China have been the resource of several worldwide health issues, and their operation should cease immediately to be able to protect the Chinese persons and the international network from additional health threats, the senators wrote.
"Therefore, we happen to be urging China to shut down all wet markets that enable interactions between humans and wild animals that pose public health risks," the lawmakers concluded.
Prominent among the band of 11 Senators were Republican Mitt Romney, Republican Lindsey Graham and Democratic Chris Coons.
"We understand and value that wet markets are an important element of Chinese society and life-style, but we believe the existing moment, which includes disrupted everyday life all over the world, calls for extreme precautions."
Last week, China published an official timeline that said that the novel coronavirus was first detected in Wuhan on later December where it had been listed as "pneumonia of unidentified cause".
The letter of the Senators employs Dr Anthony Fauci, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the National Institutes of Health and wellbeing, needed the closing of these markets.
"They should shut down (wet markets) right away. After all it boggles my brain whenever we have so various diseases that emanate out of this unusual human animal user interface that we don't merely shut it straight down. I don't really know what else offers to eventually get us to understand that," he said.
"And I think that there are certain countries in which that is an extremely common place. I would like to see the remaining world seriously lean with a whole lot of pressure on those countries which may have that because what we are going through at this time is a direct result of that," Fauci said.
In the October 2006 issue of Current Opinions in Infectious Diseases, it had been discovered that in Chinese wet-markets, unique epicenters for transmission of probable viral pathogens, new genes could be acquired or existing genes altered through various mechanisms such as for example genetic reassortment, recombination and mutation.
The wet-markets, at better proximity to individuals, with high viral burden or strains of higher transmission efficiency, facilitate transmission of the viruses to human beings."
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