The capital of China’s southern Guangdong province has suspended imports of frozen meat, fish and seafood from coronavirus-hit countries, as Beijing intensifies scrutiny of refrigerated food as a possible carrier of the disease.
Guangzhou authorities on Sunday announced the temporary ban from virus hotspots, without naming specific countries, and ordered all workers who had come into contact with frozen goods to undergo RNA tests for Covid-19. Guangdong is China’s most populous province with 113m residents and is an important manufacturing hub responsible for more than a 10th of the country’s economic growth. In the first half of 2020, Guangzhou, the provincial capital, imported more than $665m in frozen meat, fish and seafood.
Last week Shenzhen, the Guangdong city on the border of the Chinese mainland with Hong Kong, said that a sample collected from imported frozen chicken wings from Brazil had tested positive for the virus.
‘C‘hina thinks it has the virus under control so they want to use any means possible to prevent a return
Xi Chen, Yale
The Brazilian government rejected the claims, pointing out that World Health Organization experts had said there was no evidence that frozen food or its packaging were a risk factor in spreading the virus.
But Chinese officials continue to raise concerns about the trade of refrigerated food. Since late June, when Chinese customs launched widespread swabbing of imported goods, there have been 10 incidents of frozen goods or their packaging testing positive.
Xi Chen, a public health policy academic at Yale university, said that the positive tests were probably triggered by lingering genetic material of a dead virus, which would be incapable of infecting humans. “China thinks it has the virus under control so they want to use any means possible to prevent a return … but we need to look at the science and work out measures that do not disrupt international trade,” Mr Chen said.
He added that global monitoring of imports by epidemiologists was needed to confirm whether the concerns were warranted. A Guangdong official who works on coronavirus prevention said he did not expect a blanket ban, but that at this initial stage it was necessary to be more stringent.