Scott Morrison Supports Calls To Shut Down China's Animal Wet Markets

There are growing calls for wet markets to be shutdown in China in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

While the original source of Covid-19 hasn't been confirmed, experts are looking into whether a wet market was to blame.

A wet market sells fresh meat, fish, produce, and other perishable goods and gets its name from the floors being constantly wet from 'the spraying of fresh produce and cleaning of meat and seafood stalls'.

In China, some of these markets have many animals stacked on top of each other and can be prime location for viruses already common in different species to mutate to affect humans.

Daniel Case (Creative Commons)

As a result, people want these markets to be shut down or tightly regulated to prevent something like Covid-19 from happening again.

One of those people is Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

Speaking to 2GB Radio, the Aussie leader said: "It is a very real and significant problem wherever they exist. This virus started in China and went around the world and that's how it started, we all know that, and these wet markets can be a real problem with what can occur.

"From a world health point of view, I think this is something the World Health Organisation (WHO) should do something about.

PA

"We've got to be quite strident on these things in these forums and making sure that they're dealing with what are quite serious health risks."

Experts were able to say with 'high probability' that Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) originated in bats and spread to humans either directly or through animals held in Chinese markets.

SARS broke out in 2002-03 and infected more than 8,000 people.

In contrast, there have now been more than one million confirmed cases of coronavirus around the world, according to numbers maintained by Bing.

Coronavirus

Covid-19 is now also responsible for more than 51,000 deaths.

More than 208,000 people have recovered from the virus, however it is a long road for the many others who aren't yet cleared.

It took around 55 days for the number of cases to hit 100,000. The tally reached 500,000 in 76 days. Then it took just eight more days for the number of infected patients to double to one million, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

The United States continues to lead the world with the number of cases, at 239,000, however Italy has the highest number of deaths, with more than 13,900. Spain isn't far behind with 10,000 deaths.

More than 100 confirmed cases of the coronavirus have been recorded in 117 countries. Fifty countries have more than 1,000 cases and only seven have registered more than 50,000.

Topics: News, Coronavirus, Australia

Stewart Perrie

Stewart Perrie is a Trending Journalist at LADbible. His first job was as a newsreader and journalist at the award winning Sydney radio station, Macquarie Radio. He was solely responsible for the content broadcast on multiple stations across Australia when the MH17, Germanwings and AirAsia disasters unfolded. Stewart has covered the conflict in Syria for LADbible, interviewing a doctor on the front line, and has contributed to the hugely successful UOKM8 campaign.

@stewartperrie