Detection of a bacteria that caused cholera in a student in the Chinese city of Wuhan and was also found in samples from softshell turtles in the local food market has triggered concern as the city’s meat market had unleashed the devastating COVID-19 pandemic that has caused millions of deaths and human suffering on an unprecedented scale wordlwide.
The food market where samples from softshell turtles tested positive of the pathogen capable of causing cholera has been disinfected, a Reuters report from Beijing cited local authorities as saying.
While no human cholera case was found among people who came in contact with the softshell turtles, the specific store selling them was ordered to shut down for three days.
Authorities claimed that the vibrio cholerae O139 strain for the student's infection, announced on Monday, and the contaminated samples are unrelated.
However, Wuhan is yet to disclose sources of the bacteria for the student and the samples, or details on source tracing progress.
Officials are also tracking unspecified products of the same batch as the softshell turtles that have been shipped elsewhere, said the disease control authority in Wuhan's Hongshan district.
Despite assurances, the fear about another disease outbreak still made this issue among the top trending topics on China's Twitter-equivalent microblog Weibo on Friday, with 200 million reads.
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 the lesson of COVID, and hurry up in source tracing to secure evidence!!!" wrote a Weibo user.
Reports of cholera, an acute watery diarrhoea disease potentially fatal if left without prompt treatment and usually linked to contaminated food or water , are rare in mainland China, with five cases in 2021 and 11 in 2020 but no deaths.
Wuhan, with a population of more than 12 million, said on Monday the case of cholera in a local university student did not cause further infections.
