Cholera bacteria in turtles strikes raw nerve in Wuhan

BEIJING • Detection in the Chinese city of Wuhan of a strain of bacteria that caused cholera in a student and was separately found in samples from softshell turtles at a food market has struck a sensitive nerve with ordinary Chinese people, with some drawing comparisons with Covid-19.

The food market where samples from softshell turtles tested positive for the pathogen capable of causing cholera has been disinfected, the local authorities said late on Thursday. 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 for three days.

The authorities said that the Vibrio cholerae O139 strain responsible for the student's infection, announced on Monday, and the contaminated samples were unrelated.

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 a lack of solid signs of a cholera outbreak, worried netizens still made this issue among the top trending topics on China's Twitter-like microblog Weibo yesterday, 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.

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 last year and 11 in 2020, but no deaths.

"The detection of Vibrio cholerae O139... does again remind us that wet markets, while culturally and economically important in Asia, have associated with them various public health risks," said Dr Andrew Greenhill, a microbiology professor at Federation University Australia.

At this point there is no major cause for concern, but ongoing surveillance is important, Dr Greenhill said, adding that O139 has been detected in various other countries and that large cholera outbreaks were unlikely in locations with safe drinking water and adequate sanitation.

REUTERS