Customers wearing face masks buy live seafood at a Carrefour supermarket in Beijing (Reuters)
Beijing:
China has found that the commercial meat and seafood sections of the Beijing wholesale food market are severely contaminated with the new coronavirus and suspects that the region’s low temperature and high humidity may have contributed to these factors, officials said on Thursday.
Their preliminary report comes as the country’s capital attacks a resurgence of COVID-19 cases in the past week linked to the gigantic Xinfadi food center, which houses warehouses and trade rooms in an area of the size of almost 160 football fields.
The latest epidemic has infected more than 100 people and raised fears of a wider contagion in China.
Of the patients who work in Xinfadi market, most serve in seafood and aquatic product stalls, followed by the section of beef and mutton, and the patients in the seafood market showed symptoms earlier others, Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said a daily briefing on Thursday.
Low temperatures favorable for viral survival as well as high humidity could be possible explanations for why seafood markets could be a source of epidemics based on a preliminary assessment, said Wu, warning that ‘further investigation was necessary.
China has cut imports from European salmon suppliers this week due to fears that they may be linked to the recent epidemic in Beijing.
Health officials have also warned against eating raw salmon after the virus was discovered on cutting boards used for imported salmon, although the origin of the epidemic is not known.
Low hygiene standards in the wholesale food markets and the vulnerabilities of its food supply chain need to be addressed urgently, a ruling body of the ruling Communist Party said this week.
(Report by Roxanne Liu and Tony Munroe, written by Miyoung Kim; edited by Hugh Lawson)
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
