Home ‘Disease may have come from SA, not Wuhan’: Expert’s claim causes uproar

‘Disease may have come from SA, not Wuhan’: Expert’s claim causes uproar

It’s tin-hat time for one of the Western Cape’s leading scientists. Audrey Delsink, the wildlife director of the African branch of Humane Society International (HSI), is suggesting that animal trafficking may have sparked the current global health crisis – and she has hinted that it could have all started in South Africa.

Could the disease have started in South Africa, not Wuhan?

Delsink claims that ‘lessons need to be learned’ and named Mzansi as a possible location of where the outbreak’s chain could have begun. She told the Daily Express, a UK tabloid newspaper, the following:

“People are so concerned that they are the host species and it’s not inconceivable to consider that it was a pangolin from South Africa that was in the mix there and was the intermediate host.”

“The fact of the matter is that we have bats and pangolin here. Bats, especially, host a number of diseases, so in South Africa we have all those species. We need to start questioning how and what we do with animals, because this has brought us to our knees.”

Audrey Delsink

Delsink works for the HSI, who are a global animal protection organisation. Her theory is that the mistreatment of certain species, and the way they are transported for profit, could be the catalyst for the illness which has killed citizens in a majority of countries across the planet.

Social media reacts

That statement has gone down just about as terribly as one would imagine: The Chinese city of Wuhan has long been established as ‘ground zero’ for the spread of a disease which has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. Delsink’s sudden accusation against South Africa has provoked a fierce reaction online:



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