Wuhan bans hunting, eating wild animals for five years
central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the global coronavirus pandemic is believed to have originated, has issued a total ban on the hunting, breeding and human consumption of wild animals.
The move is in an apparent response to research showing the virus most likely originated among bats and was transmitted to people via an intermediary wild species sold for food at a market in the city.
The regulation will be enforced immediately and will be in effect for five years. Issued on Wednesday, it seeks to carry out measures passed at the national level covering protected land animals as well as sea life, promising financial relief to help dealers move into other lines of business.
However, it contains exceptions, including for animals used for Chinese medicine, as long as they are not consumed as food for humans. That left it unclear whether the ban would cover pangolins, mammals whose scales are used for traditional Chinese medicine but which are thought to have been the intermediary carrier of the virus. Wuhan conducted 887,321 nucleic acid tests on May 20, the local health authority said on Thursday, compared with 856,128 a day earlier. China has reported 33 new coronavirus cases, including 31 asymptomatic ones, majority of them in Wuhan. In Wuhan 281 people with asymptomatic symptoms along with 861 of those who came in contact with them were kept under quarantine. Asymptomatic cases pose a problem as the patients are tested Covid-19 positive but develop no symptoms such as fever, cough or sore throat. However, they pose a risk of spreading disease to others.
Altogether 4,634 people had died of the Covid-19 in China so far. As of Wednesday, the overall confirmed cases have reached 82,967, including 84 patients who were still being treated.
CHINA TO IMPLEMENT ITS FIRST CIVIL CODE China’s parliament is poised to enact its first civil code, a wideranging legislative package that includes strengthening protection of property rights in a Communist Party-ruled country whose embrace of private ownership has long been awkward.
The civil code, in the works since 2014, will become law at a time when China needs its oftenembattled private sector to step up investment to help revive a virus-battered economy, and will be a centrepiece of the annual parliamentary session that begins on Friday after a more than two month delay.