More China pressure: World leaders demand wet markets be shut downJust the News, May 3, 2020
Amid an escalating war of words between Australia and China provoked by the global spread of the coronavirus, international pressure is building on China to close its wildlife "wet" markets, a notorious source of infectious diseases jumping from animals to humans.
As global health experts were learning about the eruption of COVID-19 in the Chinese industrial city of Wuhan in January, Beijing ordered a temporary shutdown of wet markets, followed by a "permanent" ban in February.
In mid-April, China's wet markets reopened.
This response follows a pattern set during the 2003 SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) outbreak, when the Chinese government first shut down the markets, but later reopened them because of the very high Chinese demand for domestic and exotic meat consumption and the use of animal body parts for medicinal and aphrodisiac purposes.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is calling upon the U.S., France, Germany and other member states of the World Health Organization (WHO) to support an independent investigation into the origin of COVID-19, a demand he is expected to reaffirm at the May 17 WHO assembly.
Morrison wants more transparency from China and any other nations in which wet markets are found, including commitments to empower teams of independent experts to enter countries to investigate the sources and spread of pandemics.
More:
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/world-leaders-wet-markets-worldwide-be-shut-down
