Despite pushback from Western health authorities, senior officials in China’s government continue to claim live strains of COVID-19 can be carried on frozen seafood packaging.
The claims first emerged after a COVID-19 outbreak at the Xinfadi market in Beijing in June 2020 that sickened more than 130 people. Chinese health officials said they had discovered live virus on a cutting board used for fileting salmon in the market. Subsequently, numerous Chinese officials said COVID-19 was arriving in the country via the cold chain and specifically through seafood imports.
This week, the head of the Chinese side of the World Health Organization-Chinese joint team of experts investigating the origins of COVID-19 told Chinese media that “cold chain transmission plays an important part in the origin and transmission” of the virus.
Liang Wannian, who has led the team’s efforts to visit various sites in Wuhan – including the Huanan Seafood Market, where the virus was first detected in December 2020 – echoed remarks that have appeared frequently in Chinese media in the past year, suggesting that the virus may have entered China on packaging of seafood products. The WHO team is scheduled to deliver its initial report imminently – as soon as this week, according to WHO officials.
The narrative in China’s state media has sought to concentrate the public’s attention on imported seafood and meat packaging as a possible infection source. Food safety and health authorities from around the globe have made efforts to dismiss any linkage between seafood and COVID-19 as false.
Nevertheless, China has ramped up restrictions on seafood imports, demanding food safety guarantees from trading partners and food exporters, and punishing a number of seafood companies it said were responsible for bringing COVID-19 into the country.
Last week, companies from Indian and Russia were barred from shipping seafood into China for one week. Over the past six months, the General Administration of Customs of China has announced the discovery of traces of COVID-19 on the packaging of numerous seafood products. Most recently, it announced COVID-19 had been found on seafood packaging on cod products from the Strelets processing vessel, owned by the Murmansk-based company of the same name. COVID-19 was also detected on packaging from a consignment of shrimp from Indian firm MS RF Exports, according to the authority.
The more rigorous Customs checks have slowed the trade of seafood into and out of China to a crawl, with a huge number of containers of imported frozen seafood piling up in Chinese ports as local authorities conduct COVID testing, which is now required for all seafood products entering China.
Photo courtesy of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs
