WELLINGTON / BEIJING (Reuters) – China this week reported several cases of frozen food packaging infected with the novel coronavirus, while New Zealand said it was investigating the possibility that its latest COVID-19 cases could be recovered after imported cargo.
PHILO PHOTO: The ultrastructural morphology exhibited by the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV), which was identified as the cause of an outbreak of respiratory disease first discovered in Wuhan, China, is seen in an illustration released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, US January 29, 2020. Alissa Eckert, MS; Dan Higgins, MAM / CDC / Handout via REUTERS.
Here’s what happened and what experts say about it:
WHAT HAPPENED:
-No-Zealand reported their first COVID-19 cases in more than three months on Wednesday, prompting a rapid reinstatement of movement restrictions. Health officials raised the possibility that the virus had arrived via freight in New Zealand, seeing one of the infected people work at a cool shop that takes imported frozen goods from abroad.
-China said on Thursday a sample of frozen chicken wings imported into Shenzhen from Brazil had positive tests for the virus. The discovery by local disease control centers was part of routine screenings of meat and seabird imports since June, when a new outbreak in Beijing was linked to the city’s Xinfadi Wholesale Feeding Center.
Earlier this week, traces of the virus were found in China on the packaging of frozen shrimp from Ecuador and on the outer packaging of imported frozen seabirds arriving at the port of Yantai from Dalian in northeastern China.
Chinese customs first found the virus in Ecuador’s packaging on July 10. It marked the first positive results of 227,934 samples taken from imported food, its packaging, and the environment.
WHAT EXPERTS SAY ABOUT THE RISK OF PACKAGE INFECTION:
-Studies suggest that the virus can hang on packaging material between hours and days, depending on the material here, temperature and humidity, according to the World Health Organization. The virus can remain on plastic or paper for 4-5 days.
-There is currently no evidence that humans can catch COVID-19 from food or food packaging, according to the WHO here a view supported by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other government agencies. Coronaviruses cannot multiply in food – they need a living animal as a human host to multiply and survive.
-Since the new coronavirus cannot replicate on the surface of food or packaging, it can only gradually weaken outside a living cell, said Jin Dong-Yan, professor of virology at the University of Hong Kong.
He could not figure out that a person could spread droplets containing the virus on the surface of food, as a package, and someone else could then pick up the virus by touching the surface and then their mouth or nose. But such a case would be rare, he said.
“Infection from contact with a frozen virus through imported food” is still not considered an important route of infection and still not an event that should substantially affect public health policy, “said Eyal Leshem, director of the Center for Travel Medicine and Tropical Diseases at Sheba Medical Center in Israel.
– “The number of virus particles coming out of a person’s mouth or nose is much greater than a few virus particles left on frozen food, one that touches it and then spreads,” said T. Jacob John, retired professor of clinical virology at Christian Medical College, Vellore, India.
“Among all the risks, I think these are very low risks.”
Report by Rocky Swift in Tokyo, Roxanne Liu, Muyu Xu, Dominique Patton and Hallie Gu in Beijing, Jane Wardell in Sydney, and Anuron Mitra in Bengaluru; Compiled by Sayantani Ghosh; Edited by Neil Fullick
.
