An embarrassed China looks to clean up health regulations
China, the epicenter of the novel coronavirus that has now infected more than 1 million Americans, appears to be ramping up health regulations, the communist government announced Tuesday.
The COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese report, has “exposed some problems in legislation and indicated the need for systematic law revisions and improvements” with its health codes.
A state-run website states the country’s “illegal wildlife trade” is being banned and “the prevention and control of environmental pollution by solid waste” is also being targeted for change.
China is also expected to “revise the law on animal epidemic prevention.” That would include conservation measures while they “assess” the law on the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases.
Debate is set to begin Wednesday on the regulations.
But it comes as the U.S. is calling on China to permanently shut down traditional wet markets — where vendors sell live fish and all sorts of animals, many in cages stacked up atop each other.
The top theory on how COVID-19 started was at the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan when a human or humans were infected with a virus from an animal at the wet market.
Stock footage of pangolins — a scaly mammal that looks like an anteater — have made it on to news bulletins, suggesting this animal was the staging post for the virus before it spread to humans, the Guardian reported.
It’s clear the virus — which has spread across the globe like an invisible wildfire — infected the planet from somewhere in Wuhan.
Wuhan has since be targeted as the jumping-off point for the coronavirus that has infected 3.1 million people worldwide and killed nearly 217,000, according to the Johns Hopkins University map of the pandemic.
from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/2YhFHUu
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