The Chinese Year of the Flying Rat (ePub)

Where rats and mice used to transmit diseases, nowadays the flying rats (bats) are the cause of this COVID-19 pandemic, originating from wildlife in life markets. Coronaviruses had also recently caused the SARS an MERS pandemic.

Since Aug 2018 there have been outbreaks of African swine fever in several provinces of China. Up to 200 million pigs have been culled or died due to the disease, while pork output felt by 30%. At the end of 2019, there was a first outbreak of corona virus COVID-19 in Wuhan, which has since been established to be the source of this virus. After the 2013 SARS epidemic, which spread from Hong Kong, Chinese virologists warned earlier that batborne CoVs will re-emerge to cause the next disease outbreak. China is a likely hot spot. Bats live in proximity to humans and farms. The ability to fly of these flying rats makes them wide-ranging, which helps in spreading viruses, and their excreta can spread disease. Bats are host to a higher proportion of zoonoses than all other mammals.

• On February 24, 2020, the Chinese National People's Congress decided that illegal consumption and trade in wild animals will be "severely punished", as well as hunting, trade or transportation of wild animals for consumption.
• Stopping the sale of wildlife in markets is essential to limit future outbreaks of diseases that pass from animals to humans.