While animal origin of Covid-19 remains a mystery, will revised law in China help prevent more diseases jumping from wildlife to people?

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About 10 million residents of Wuhan, where Covid-19 was first reported, endured a 76-day lockdown from January 2020 to contain the virus that causes the disease. Such responses became a key pillar of China’s zero-Covid policy, but another wave of infection hit the city three years later when the authorities pivoted to living with the virus. In the last of a three-part series on the anniversary of the lockdown, Echo Xie examines how the Wuhan outbreak led to changes in the law governing the trade in wild animals and whether they will help prevent future zoonotic diseases.

Three years ago, when early Covid-19 cases were linked to a wholesale seafood market in central China that also sold other live wild animals for consumption, the local authorities quickly shut it down.