Although
no direct link has been established between COVID-19 infection and foodborne transmission, a series of recent incidents highlighted frozen foods as carriers for the
long-range transport of SARS-CoV-2 during the current pandemic. The earliest incident occurred on 12
June 2020 in the Xinfadi agricultural produce wholesale market in Beijing, where SARS-CoV-2 was detected on a cutting board used for processing
imported salmon (Global Times
2020a). Although later investigations did not find conclusive evidence on its origin, this particular incident raised awareness by authorities and consumers on frozen foods as possible SARS-CoV-2 carriers. Since the beginning of July 2020, at least
nine incidents of food contamination have been reported across the country, where SARS-CoV-2 was detected on
imported foods, mostly on their
packaging materials (Fig.
2). Most of those incidents traced to
frozen shrimps imported from
Ecuador, where novel coronavirus was found on their packaging materials, and in one particular case, SARS-CoV-2 was also detected on the
interior of a shipping container. Notably, in the latest incident in Shenzhen, Guangdong province on
August 12, 2020, local authorities found SARS-CoV-2 on the surface of a
frozen chicken wing sample originated from
Brazil, which became the
first known case where the novel coronavirus was detected on actual food samples (SMHC
2020).
The frequent detection of SARS-CoV-2 in frozen foods suggest that these are not random, isolated incidents but rather alerting signs that viral contamination and foodborne transmission may present a systematic risk in the ongoing pandemic. This is plausible given that food contamination may occur via respiratory droplets, contact or other route, during the farming, processing, storage, transport, and retailing process where foods may contact with different workers and ambient environments in the “farm-to-table” lifecycle. It is particularly noteworthy that prior to the re-emergence of the first COVID-19 case on
June 11, 2020, there had been
no local transmission reported for 56 consecutive days in Beijing (China Daily
2020a). A total of
256 cases were confirmed over the next two weeks, with 98.8% of those
linked to the Xinfadi market where a
salmon cutting board was tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 (Xinhua News
2020).
Genome sequencing of the SARS-CoV-2 virus sampled from the Xinfadi market identified a
European coronavirus strain, providing
strong evidence that the re-emergent COVID-19 cases in Beijing may be caused imported sources rather than continued transmission of the local coronavirus strain (CCDC
2020).
) that he was a climate change denialist, but there's not much about that in the above Wiki entry.
