The eastern Chinese city of Jinan said it found the new coronavirus in beef and tripe, and in the packaging of these products, from Brazil, New Zealand and Bolivia, as China intensifies testing on frozen foods.
This comes after the World Health Organization (WHO) previously said that the risk of coronavirus from frozen foods remains low.
The importers were a unit of Guotai International Group and Shanghai Zhongli Development Trade, the Reuters news agency said, citing the Jinan Municipal Health Commission.
The ports of entry were the Shanghai Yangshan port customs and the outer port customs, he said. The Shandong Province city statement did not mention the companies that shipped the products.
More than 7,500 people who may have had contact with the contaminated products and other related personnel tested negative for the virus that causes COVID-19, it said.
Earlier on Saturday, the western Chinese city of Lanzhou said it had detected the Covid-19 virus in the packaging of a batch of shrimp imported from Saudi Arabia.
China is the main buyer of beef in the world and Brazil and Argentina its largest suppliers.
Zhengzhou, the capital of central China’s Henan province, detected coronavirus on the outer packaging of frozen pork from Argentina on Friday, local authorities said in a statement Saturday night on the social media platform WeChat. .
The samples that tested positive came from a 24-ton batch of frozen pork that was shipped from a cold storage facility in Qingdao port to a warehouse for a market in Zhengzhou city.
The batch was found to be contaminated during an inspection before the goods could enter the warehouse, the government said.
The World Health Organization says the risk of contracting COVID-19 from frozen food is low, but China has repeatedly sounded alarms after detecting the virus in imported food products, prompting disruptive import bans.
With contributions from the agency
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