A family from Wuhan, China, rushed to the hospital for getting tested for the coronavirus or COVID-19 after spotting a whole dead bat inside a pot of pork soup that they ordered from a restaurant.
According to reports, the black mammal can be seen with its wings and body curled up together as it was floating on the surface of the half-eaten soup. The family immediately went to the hospital over fears of catching the coronavirus, but their results came back negative, as reported by the local media. Wuhan is the city where the coronavirus outbreak started last year, and there are many claims suggesting the disease came from wild animals like bats and pangolins.
Dead Bat Found in Pork Soup
The family, which is known by their surname Chen, got a pot of frozen pork soup from a nearby restaurant in Wuhan of Hubei province on July 10, as reported by local media. The father ate some of the broth but did not notice anything unusual, his som told Hubei Television as reported by the Daily Mail.
They were shocked to find the whole dead bat in the food when they were planning to eat it on the third day after they purchased it. Mr. Chen stated, "I was going to reheat the soup and I scooped up something black. It was a small baby bat." His mother mentioned that she thought it was some kind of spice. "I checked it with chopsticks and I saw its wings and ears. It even had fur," the woman told as quoted by the Daily Mail.
The family went to the restaurant where they ordered from as the eatery offered them a refund and mentioned that they purchased the frozen product from a local soup manufacturer. The owner of the restaurant denied that the bat got into the broth while it was being made. "Bats are normally active during the night, but we make our soup during the day. We seal the pot immediately when we finish and put it in the fridge. We never leave it outside," the owner said.
Local authorities had launched an investigation after receiving a complaint. The family also got nucleic acid tests after they found the bat and all of them tested negative.
The deadly virus outbreak which probably originated from the Chinese city of Wuhan located in the Hubei province is currently spreading like wildfire and has infected more than 15.5 million people worldwide. The virus has claimed the lives of overt 633,000 in more than 170 nations.
