Coronavirus: Patients being fed turtle meat at Wuhan hospital despite reports that virus spread from animals
Patients at a hospital in Wuhan that is treating those with the coronavirus have revealed that they were given softshell turtle meat for dinner while being quarantined.
While that may seem like a mundane enough detail, the Daily Mail reports that the meat of softshell turtles, or 'jia yu' in Mandarin, is considered to be highly nutritious in traditional Chinese medicine. People in the country believe that the turtles, which are native to China, are rich in protein and have special properties that help patients recover quickly from sickness. They can be hunted in the wild or come from breeding farms, and are usually simmered in water to make a nourishing broth.
The news emerged after Independent Chinese news outlet Ren Jian Zhi Bei published a video taken by several patients who had been quarantined inside a makeshift hospital set up to treat the coronavirus.
One of the patients in the video introduces his hospital meal and says, "today's meal includes softshell turtle meat."
Another patient, a woman, can be heard giving a sort of speech. "Brothers and sisters, look, you are fighting on the front line, and we are fighting on the front line with you," she said.
A third patient showed the viewers a set of life necessities given to him by the medical center, including slippers, a towel, toothpaste, and toilet paper.
The news of the turtle meat might just raise concern in some quarters because experts suspect the deadly virus jumped on to humans from an animal source.
MEAWW previously reported that the Wuhan coronavirus also called 2019-nCoV is a zoonotic virus, meaning some animal has transferred the virus to humans.
While it was initially theorized that the virus may have emerged from Wuhan's Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market where a variety of animals, including civet cats, snakes, dogs, peacocks, otters, camels and koalas were being sold, scientists later shifted their opinion to zero in on bats and snakes.
Researchers at the South China Agricultural University have also reportedly identified the pangolin as a 'potential intermediate host'.
The coronavirus has, so far, infected more than 31,000 people globally, killed at least 722, and prompted the World Health Organization to declare a global health emergency. The number of infected could be much higher, however, with officials still unclear how many have contracted the disease in Wuhan, the Chinese city of 14 million that is the epicenter of the epidemic.
In a bid to control the spread, China's Vice Premier Sun Chunlan has called for a 'people's war' against the virus and the central government has ordered Wuhan to round up all suspected coronavirus patients as well as their close contacts in mass quarantine camps.