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 Here's what has happened and what experts say about it:
WHAT'S HAPPENED:
-New Zealand reported its first COVID-19 cases in more than three
months on Wednesday, prompting a swift reimposition of movement
restrictions. Health officials raised the possibility that the virus
had arrived in New Zealand via freight, given one of the infected
people works at a cool store that takes imported frozen goods from
overseas.
-China said on Thursday a sample of frozen chicken wings imported
into Shenzhen from Brazil had tested positive for the virus. The
discovery by local disease control centres was part of routine
screenings of meat and seafood imports that have been carried out
since June, when a new outbreak in Beijing was linked to the city's
Xinfadi wholesale food centre.
-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 seafood that arrived at Yantai port from Dalian
in northeast China.
-Chinese customs officers first found the virus in packaging from
Ecuador on July 10. It marked the first positive results from
227,934 samples that had been taken from imported foods, their
packaging, and the environment.
WHAT EXPERTS SAY ABOUT THE RISK OF INFECTION FROM PACKAGING:
-Studies suggest the virus can linger on packaging material between
hours and days, depending on the material https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/risk-comms-updates/update-20-epi-win-covid-19.pdf?sfvrsn=5e0b2d74_2,
temperature and humidity, according to the World Health
Organization. The virus can stay 4-5 days on plastic or paper.
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-There is currently no evidence that people can catch COVID-19 from food or food
packaging, according to the WHO
https://www.who.int/
westernpacific/news/q-a-detail/questions-relating-to-consumers, a view backed by
the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other government
agencies. Coronaviruses cannot multiply in food – they need a live animal or
human host to multiply and survive.
-Since the new coronavirus cannot replicate on the surface of food or packaging,
it can only become gradually weaker outside a living cell, said Jin Dong-Yan,
virology professor at the University of Hong Kong.
He did not rule out that a person could spread droplets containing the virus on
the surface of food, or a package, and someone else could then contract 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
to be considered a major route of infection and still not an event that should
substantially affect policy at the public health levels," 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 a person's mouth or nose is far
greater than a few virus particles remaining on frozen foods, somebody touching
it and then spreading it," 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."
(Reporting 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; Editing by Neil Fullick)
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