Image: Reuters Berita 24 English - People in Wuhan , China, are upset about the discovery of a bacteria that caused cholera in a student an...
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| Image: Reuters |
Berita 24 English - People in Wuhan, China, are upset about the discovery of a bacteria that caused cholera in a student and was also found in samples from softshell turtles at a food market. Some people think this is related to COVID-19.
Local officials said late Thursday that the food market where samples from softshell turtles showed the presence of a pathogen that can cause cholera has been cleaned.
People who came into contact with the softshell turtles did not get cholera, but the store that sold them was told to close for three days.
Authorities said that the student's infection with vibrio cholerae O139, which was announced on Monday, and the contaminated samples are not related.
The disease control authority in Wuhan's Hongshan district said that officials are also looking for other products from the same batch as the softshell turtles that have been shipped elsewhere.
Even though there aren't any clear signs of a cholera outbreak, people worried about another disease outbreak made this one of the top trending topics on China's Twitter-like microblog Weibo on Friday, with 200 million reads.
In late 2019, the first COVID-19 infections were linked to a local market in Wuhan that sold fish and seafood products. The fact that no one knows where the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, came from is a major source of tension between China and the U.S.
"Learn from COVID and move quickly to find evidence through source tracing!" wrote a Weibo user.
Cholera is an acute disease that causes watery diarrhoea and can be fatal if not treated quickly. It is usually caused by contaminated food or water. In mainland China, there were only five cases in 2021 and 11 cases in 2020, but no deaths.
Andrew Greenhill, a microbiology professor at Federation University Australia, said, "The discovery of Vibrio cholerae O139 reminds us once again that wet markets, which are culturally and economically important in Asia, also pose public health risks."
Greenhill said that there is no big reason to worry right now, but that continued monitoring is important. He also said that O139 has been found in several other countries and that large cholera outbreaks are unlikely in places with clean water and good sanitation.
"The fact that the strain was found shows that surveillance is being done, which is a good thing."
Wuhan, which has more than 12 million people, said on Monday that a local college student's case of cholera did not spread to other people.
Wuhan hasn't said where the bacteria on the student and in the samples came from or how the search for the source is going.
