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28-08-2021
WUHAN/ BEIJING: Arriving at the gate to the Hubei Wildlife Rescue Centre on the east side of the Chinese city of Wuhan near its famous lakes, you can hear the continuous squawking of birds and a cacophony of noises from the other animals inside.
On the building to the left of the gate a sign prominently advertises the centre’s affiliation with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), one of two bio-security laboratories in the city that have been thrust into the spotlight, in an increasingly fractious debate over the origin of COVID-19, a virus that has now killed more than 4.47 million people around the world.
According to documentation from the centre, it houses several veterinary clinics, monkey facilities, pens for amphibians and reptiles, wildlife breeding facilities and an animal hospital. Netting to keep birds and other animals from escaping is visible along the fence.
The rescue centre, in a hilly area in the Hongshan district, is next door to a private zoo, Jiufeng Forest Zoo, which was shut the day before Wuhan was locked down in January 2020 to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
More than 18 months later, as G7 leaders call for “a transparent, evidence-based and expert-led World Health Organization or WHO-convened phase 2 study on the origins of COVID-19, that is free from interference” and intelligence services in the United States reveal their findings on the origins of the virus, it remains unclear as to whether the wildlife centre or the zoo were ever questioned as part of investigations into how the disease emerged into the world.
Repeated requests since March to representatives of the Jiufeng Forest Zoo and the companies connected to it, the Hubei Wildlife Rescue Centre, the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), the provincial forestry bureau and forestry university, for further information about activities at these two facilities, which are on property owned and overseen by the Hubei Forestry Bureau and the Hubei Forestry University were declined.
While there is no known link between the COVID-19 outbreak and the Hubei Wildlife Rescue Centre, the failure of authorities to explain its connections to the WIV, what research was being conducted there and on what animals, as well as its relationship with the Jiufeng Forest Zoo next door, raises questions about its wildlife utilization practices and potential conflicts of interest related to the investigation into the origins of the outbreak.
Scrutinizing the links
The wildlife rescue centre has partnered with WIV on research into zoonotic viruses since 2013, and has a history of promoting the use of wildlife and breeding hybrids of wild animals. More than 200,000 wild animals from 89 different species have been housed at the facility or passed through its gates since it opened in 2000, according to its website.
Kristian Andersen, an infectious disease expert at the United States’ Scripps Research Institute, who believes that the Huanan seafood market and other markets in Wuhan were the most likely source for both the original outbreak and its later amplification, says there needs to be a broader understanding of what was going on in Wuhan in the autumn of 2019 related to wildlife use.
“These types of activities ongoing on a daily basis like wildlife handling and the wet markets and things like that are very high risk (in terms of zoonotic virus transmission),” he told Al Jazeera.
“We need to get a better sense of those streams outside the market, and how did they lead to the market.”
According to the joint China-WHO report that was released in March, there were no live wild mammals at the Huanan market when inspectors from the Wuhan forestry bureau, the Wuhan forest police, the local centre for disease control and prevention and local market supervision authorities arrived on 31 December 2019, before shutting it down on 1 January 2020 but a report published in Nature Scientific Reports earlier in June found “47,381 individuals from 38 species, including 31 protected species sold between May 2017 and November 2019 in Wuhan’s markets”.
“Almost all animals were sold alive, caged, stacked and in poor condition,” it added. Though bats and pangolins were not among the species identified, there were marmots, raccoon dogs, civet cats, badgers and wild birds. Both raccoon dogs and civets were implicated in the emergence of SARS back in 2002 and 2003.
Only 31 farms in Hubei province were checked to see if COVID-19 emerged from wildlife there after April 2020, according to the joint WHO study, although the province is known to have hundreds of breeders.
One area of Western Hubei alone was home to 290 farms with between 450,000 and 780,000 wild captive-bred animals at the start of the outbreak, according to several official government notices issued early in 2020. (Al Jazeera)
