A food market where samples of softshell turtles tested positive for a pathogen capable of causing cholera has been disinfected, local authorities announced late Thursday.The detection of the bacteria that caused cholera in a student, which was found separately in samples from softshell turtles at a food market, has struck a nerve with ordinary Chinese in the Chinese city of Wuhan, with some linking it to COVID-19.
While no case of human cholera was found among people who came into contact with the softshell turtles, the particular store that sold them was closed for three days.Authorities said the O139 strain of vibrio cholerae for the student’s infection, reported Monday, and the contaminated samples are not related.
Officials are also tracking unspecified products from the same batch as the softshell turtles that were shipped elsewhere, the Hongshan District Disease Control Bureau in Wuhan said.Despite the lack of solid signs of a cholera outbreak, residents worried about another outbreak of the disease still ranked among the top trending topics on the Chinese Twitter microblog Weibo on Friday with 200 million reads.
Reports of cholera
The earliest COVID-19 infections in late 2019 were initially linked to a local market in Wuhan that also sold seafood and fish products. The origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 remains a mystery and a major source of tension between China and the United States.Take a lesson from COVID and hurry up to find the source to secure the evidence!!!” wrote a weibo user.Reports of cholera, an acute watery diarrheal disease that is potentially fatal if left without prompt treatment and is usually linked to contaminated food or water, are rare in mainland China, with five cases in 2021 and 11 in 2020, but no deaths .
“The detection of Vibrio cholerae O139…reminds us again that wet markets, while culturally and economically important in Asia, are associated with various public health risks,” said Andrew Greenhill, professor of microbiology at Federation University Australia.There is no major cause for concern at this time, while ongoing monitoring is important, Greenhill said, adding that O139 has been detected in various other countries and that large outbreaks of cholera are unlikely in places with safe drinking water and adequate sanitation.
“In fact, the detection of the strain shows that surveillance is being done, which can only be considered positive.”Wuhan, a city of more than 12 million people, said on Monday that a case of cholera in a local university student had not caused further infections.Wuhan has not yet released the sources of the bacteria for the student and the samples or details of the source tracing process.
