The Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison urged the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations to act against China’s wet markets. Generally, wet markets refer to the markets that sell fresh meat, fish, etc, but in China, these markets are known to sell the meat of wild animals, even smuggled endangered species from other nations, which are known sources of several deadly pathogens like the Wuhan Coronavirus.

Scott Morrison is calling for a global crackdown and ban on Chinese “wet markets”, following speculation the coronavirus originated in one in Wuhan and made the jump to humans.https://t.co/phUXlYoQSN — The Daily Telegraph (@dailytelegraph) April 3, 2020

On Thursday, he was quoted as saying, “Wet markets were a very real and significant problem wherever they exist. This virus started in China and went round the world. 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.”

Earlier it was reported that a 57-year-old female shrimp seller, Wei Guixian, at a Chinese wet market in Wuhan is believed to be the ‘Patient Zero’ or the first person to have been diagnosed with the virus. On December 11, 2019, she had visited a local clinic and was given an injection. When her condition worsened, Guxian rushed to the Eleventh Hospital in Wuhan. The doctors gave her some medicines but could not cure her disease. She then went to the Wuhan Union Hospital where a doctor had called her disease as “ruthless.”

The notorious wet markets of China, which are believed to be the epicentres of the Chinese Coronavirus from where the deadly pandemic was exported to the rest of the world, have recently reopened, selling bats pangolins and dogs for human consumption.

- Advertisement -

A paper published by scientists years ago predicted the reemergence of such viruses. The paper published by Cheng VC, Lau SK, Woo PC and Yuen KY in 2007 warned, “The presence of a large reservoir of SARS-CoV-like viruses in horseshoe bats, together with the culture of eating exotic mammals in southern China, is a time bomb.” It added, “The possibility of the re-emergence of SARS and other novel viruses from animals or laboratories and therefore the need for preparedness should not be ignored.”