(CN) Guangdong on alert against SARS/Spectre of SARS looms again

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Guangdong on alert against SARS during Spring Festival

Xinhua

January 19, 2007

 

Four years after SARS brought China to a standstill, surveillance against the

disease remains a top priority during the Spring Festival holiday in southern

Guangdong Province, according to the provincial health department.

 

A recent covert investigation by the department found that the sale and eating

of civet cats, a raccoon-like mammal which is believed to be the origin of the

SARS virus found in humans, still existed in Guangzhou, the provincial capital,

and cities in western Guangdong.

 

The selling and eating of the animal has been banned in Guangdong since the

highly contagious epidemic emerged in late 2002 and quickly spread across the

country, killing 349 people.

 

In 2003, Chinese scientists made the connection between the SARS virus and the

civet cat. It was finally confirmed as fact in November last year.

 

" We know eating civet cats is a tradition in these places, but we urge citizens

to stop the practice for the sake of their own health, " said Zhang Yonghui, head

of the health supervision office under the department.

 

" This is particularly relevant as the Spring Festival approaches, a time when a

large population of migrant workers travel back and forth between Guangdong and

their hometown. We plan to up the amount of health checks carried out on

travelers in bus and train stations. "

 

http://english.people.com.cn/200701/19/eng20070119_342987.html

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Spectre of SARS looms again as banned civets return to Chinese menu

Miro Cernetig,

CanWest News Service;

Vancouver Sun

January 08, 2007

 

GUANGZHOU, China - The scorpion ladies are still at their stalls, guarding

plastic barrels seething with hundreds of black and grey scorpions, all waiting

to be plucked out with tweezers and dipped into a hotpot or roasted before being

eaten.

 

So are the carp sellers, the butchers, with hunks of unidentified meat hanging

from hooks in the open air, and the usual pet shop stalls, selling a menagerie

of puppies, goldfish and kittens to the residents of this southern Chinese city.

 

Four years after it became infamous as the possible source of the outbreak of

severe acute respiratory syndrome SARS that killed 774 people worldwide,

including 44 in Ontario, China's Qingping market remains open for business.

 

But officially there's something you can no longer find: the wild animals, from

civets to monitor lizards to leopards that were once sold to restaurants, to

satisfy diners in this prosperous Chinese city eager for an exotic delicacy.

 

" We don't have such animals any longer, " says Ya Lijuan, using a stick to stir

her nest of scorpions, on sale for about $1 apiece with their stingers cut off.

" We are not allowed. "

 

Yet, if you know where to look, exotic wildlife which experts believe can

sometimes create a dangerous bridge for viruses to travel between animal and

human is still ready for the hotpot.

 

More worrying to health officials is that civets believed to be the source of

the SARS outbreak are again turning up in cages in Guangzhou's alleys and animal

warehouses, all out of sight of police and health officials but ready to be

cooked in the restaurants that continue to sell wildlife.

 

That became clear last month when officials reported finding more than 100 wild

animals destined for the dinner table, including 98 ferret badgers and a few

dozen others that weren't identified. Inside the seized cages there were also 45

masked palm civets, bringing the number of the raccoon-like animals found by

officials to about 100 in the last year.

 

" It is probably the biggest case this year, " Chen Xibiao, Guangzhou Forestry

Public Security Bureau commissar, told Hong Kong's South China Morning Post, one

of the few to report the seizure.

 

But Guangzhou's health department said there is no need to worry about a repeat

of SARS, even if they are only finding a fraction of the civets being sold in

Guangdong's so-called yewei, or Wild Flavour, restaurants, whose patrons believe

eating wild creatures will make them fan rong, or prosperous.

 

" Few people sell and eat civets and we do not consider it serious, " Feng Shaomin

told the newspaper. " Only if more and more people start to eat them will it

become dangerous to the public. That is why we strongly advise people not to eat

masked palm civets and hope the government enforces the ban strictly. "

 

But a day after the discovery of the civets, Chinese researchers announced some

sobering news.

 

They have even more conclusive evidence the shy civet has a distant genetic link

with human DNA, which could explain how the SARS virus jumped species.

 

When that happened in 2002 and 2003 SARS spread globally, infecting 8,098 people

and resulting in travel restrictions that were a severe blow the tourism

industry in Hong Kong and Canada.

 

It also left Chinese authorities with a black eye because they were deemed to be

underplaying SARS, which many thought was a signal of the possibility of a

global pandemic.

 

" Our research has shown that the SARS coronavirus found in human victims is the

same as the SARS coronavirus found in civet cats, " Wang Ming, an official of the

Guangzhou Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, told the China Daily after

the recent cages of civets were discovered.

 

" This discovery proves that civet cats are capable of spreading the SARS virus

to human beings. "

 

Since the discovery of the civets in the last year, Guangdong authorities have

launched further investigations of markets in search of the animals. No cases of

others being sold have been reported in the official media and civet sales

remain outlawed in the Qingping market and all others in the province of

Guangdong.

 

" All I have are these, " says Ya Lijuan, tilting her barrel of scorpions toward a

customer. " They are good eating, friend. "

 

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