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Coronavirus: China will need an army of vets to defend against future pandemics
- A year after the first Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan, the country’s animal public health system remains inadequate
- African swine fever exposed inadequacies in 2018 including a lack of qualified vets working in the field
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This is the latest story in our series on the Covid-19 pandemic, a year after the first cases were reported in the mainland city of Wuhan. It explores the worrying gaps in China’s animal health services exposed by the new coronavirus, and what can be done to prevent future zoonotic diseases. Please support us on our mission to bring you quality journalism.
When African swine fever spread like wildfire through China’s pig herd in 2018, it killed millions of animals in a few short months. It should have been a warning that the country’s animal health system was woefully underprepared for disease.
While African swine fever is fatal in pigs, luckily it cannot be passed on to humans. But, around a year later, another virus of animal origin made the rare jump to humans to become Sars-Cov-2 – the novel coronavirus that became a pandemic.
Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, has taken at least 1.6 million lives, shackled the world economy, and should serve as the definitive warning of the costs of poor animal health, which still loom large for China and the world.
Three quarters of all human diseases have their origins in animal populations, according to the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE).
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