China
urges caution opening overseas mail after Omicron case
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[January 18, 2022]
By Josh Horwitz
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China is urging people
to wear masks and gloves when opening mail, especially from abroad,
after authorities suggested the first case of the Omicron coronavirus
virus variant found in Beijing could have arrived via a package from
Canada.
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Authorities vowed to step up disinfection of overseas mail and are
insisting postal staff handling it are fully vaccinated.
The precautions come less than three weeks before the capital opens
the Winter Olympic Games and as several cities work to stamp out new
outbreaks of coronavirus infections.
"Minimize purchases of overseas goods or receiving mail from
abroad," state broadcaster CCTV said late on Monday in a social
media post.
"Be sure to protect yourself during face-to-face handovers and wear
masks and gloves; try to open the package outdoors."
Health officials said the person found infected with the Omicron
variant opened a package from Canada that had been routed through
the United States and Hong Kong and transmission via the package
"could not be ruled out".
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The case highlighted the importance of "personal defence", CCTV
said.
Similar suggestions on how to handle parcels, not just those from
overseas, were made by the National Health Commission on its
official WeChat account and reposted by authorities in the cities of
Shanghai and Nanjing.
China has been an outlier in asserting that COVID-19 can be
transmitted via cold-chain imports such as frozen meat and fish,
even though the World Health Organization has played down the risk,
and has been pushing a narrative via state media that the virus
existed abroad before it was discovered in late 2019 in the central
city of Wuhan.
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![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Jan/18/images/ads/current/rohlfs_lda_072017.png) U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention said last year that the
relative risk of coronavirus infections through
contact with contaminated surfaces or objects is
considered low. In recent weeks,
China has been battling a resurgence in cases in several cities,
some of them of the highly transmissible Omicron variant. On
Tuesday, it reported 127 new local cases with confirmed symptoms.
The State Post Bureau issued a notice on Monday stating that
international mail must be disinfected after reaching China, and
staffers who process and deliver international mail must have
received COVID-19 vaccinations and a booster.
China Post has also been reminding recipients of overseas mail to
disinfect the contents "in a timely manner" with stickers pasted on
parcels.
(Reporting by Josh Horwitz; Additional reporting by Dominique Patton
in Beijing and Shanghai Newsroom; Editing by Brenda Goh, Robert
Birsel and Raissa Kasolowsky)
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