The World Health Organisation (WHO) has cleared that the coronavirus found its way to human body though the wet wildlife market in China’s Wuhan, which ultimately shook the world by claiming over 190,000 lives. Yet, the Chinese authorities have ignored the calls from doctors, environmentalists across the globe and have allowed wet markets to sell bats—the root cause of the viral outbreak —and other wild creatures such as snakes, lizards, scorpions without any restrictions.
 
Interestingly, the SARS disease – the severe acute respiratory syndrome – had originated in China in 2002-03 by a similar coronavirus to the recent one. Yet, China learnt no lesson and kept allowing its people to trade and eat wild meat. Beijing had imposed a ban on wet shop in 2002-03 following the SARS crisis but for a short period. Many conservationists, medical professionals, research institutes in China including Chinese Academy of Sciences had hoped it would be permanent but the wildlife trade roared back soon. Now, the entire world is suffering for the mistake and misdeeds of Beijing. The number of novel coronavirus patients have reached 2.7 million-figure.
 
China is a linchpin in the illegal wildlife trade, which accounted for USD 73 billion, as per the 2017 Chinese government’s report. Over 110 different animal species are sold at the wet markets across China. After a ban for a short period, these markets including popular Baishazhou and Huanan in Wuhan, Guilin in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region are back to business with full throttle, thus exposing the people in China as well as the world to the deadly virus once again. This come even after the WHO maintained that the available evidence suggested the virus has an animal origin. “It most likely has its ecological reservoir in bats but how the virus came from bats to humans is still to be seen and discovered,” said WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib.
 
 
A latest research conducted by the Hong Kong University has showed that Covid-19 has a bat origin and are transmitted to humans via intermediate hosts. It has asked for removal of bats and pangolins from wet markets to prevent zoonotic transmission. According to the researchers from different countries, pangolins are the top suspect as the intermediate host. It means bats infected pangolins with coronavirus, who subsequently transmitted the virus to humans on their consumption. Meanwhile, researchers of the Department of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics at University of Michigan suggested that the pangolin may be a natural host rather than an intermediate host.
 
 
Despite the scientific evidences, Beijing has turned blind eye to the global calls of permanent ban on wildlife wet markets. These markets provide safe and convenient platform for the trade in exotic wildlife. China had shut the trade of wildlife in February. However, it reopened 94 percent of wet markets by March-end, according to Chinese state-run media Xinhua. Now conservationists as well as international leaders are calling for permanent ban on illegal wildlife trade through wet markets in China to snap the possible links between those markets and zoonotic diseases. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said “Given the strong link between illegal wildlife sold in wet markets and zoonotic diseases, the United States has called on the People’s Republic of China to permanently close its wildlife wet markets and all markets that sell illegal wildlife.” Meanwhile, the Australian government has called for an investigation into wildlife wet markets. "China themselves reported this to the World Organisation for Animal Health, that that was the cause of Covid-19. When you add wildlife, live wildlife, exotic wildlife - that opens up human risk and biosecurity risk to the extent we have seen,” said Australian minister David Littleproud.
 
Poor wildlife protection law enforcement and high levels of illegal trading in China has failed to ensure impose ban on wet markets, which are the prime source of fatal virus, said Jinfeng Zhou, secretary general of the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation (CBCGDF). The Wildlife Conservation Society has asked for the closure of live animal markets that sell wildlife for human consumption. “If these markets persist, and human consumption of illegal and unregulated wildlife persists, then the public will continue to face heightened risks from emerging new viruses, potentially more lethal, and the source of future pandemic spread,” said Dr Christian Walzer, executive director of the WCS health programme.
Now, the WHO has called for stricter safety and hygiene standards for wet markets and urged governments to rigorously enforce bans on the sale and trade of wildlife for food.  However, the root cause of the problem is Chinese culture, said Wang Song, a retired researcher of Zoology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. "In many people's eyes, animals are living for man, not sharing the earth with man,” he said.