Coronavirus: living samples found on frozen food packaging in east China’s Qingdao, CDC says

Port city has been the focus of an investigation by the CDC since the country’s first locally transmitted infections for 55 days were identified there last month

Despite findings, academic says ‘we already knew it was a theoretical possibility that infection could spread through contaminated objects, and this study does not change that’

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Authorities in Qingdao conducted mass testing for Covid-19 in response to a cluster of new infections in the city. Photo: AP

Published: 3:21pm, 18 Oct 2020Updated: 10:17pm, 18 Oct 2020

Living samples of the coronavirus have been detected on frozen food packaging in the east China port city of Qingdao, according to the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The announcement came after a CDC investigation into an outbreak of Covid-19 in Qingdao, which started last month and was linked to two port workers who had been patients at the same hospital.

However, the agency has not shown conclusively whether the workers were infected by handling infected packages or contaminated the packages themselves after contracting the virus somewhere else.

The CDC said its researchers detected the live samples on a package of frozen cod that had been handled by the two workers.

“It is the first time in the world that living novel coronavirus has been isolated from the outer packaging of cold-chain food,” the CDC said in a statement published late on Saturday.

It did not identify the source of the cod but warned that people handling frozen objects could be at risk as the packaging showed the coronavirus could be “imported from a long distance”.

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