Imported cold-chain goods causing increase in infections, authorities say

China has seen increasing incidents of imported cold-chain food and packages testing positive for the novel coronavirus with more provincial regions reporting such incidents, the National Health Commission said on Wednesday.

Mi Feng, spokesman for the commission, said apart from imported cold-chain seafood, meat products have also tested positive for the virus and there have also been incidents of positive test results from containers.

Ninety-eight domestic COVID-19 cases have been reported on the Chinese mainland in the past 30 days, up 7.5 times over the previous 30, he said. 

There have been instances of both goods-to-people transmission and people-to-people transmission, he added. 

The novel coronavirus can survive a long time in low temperatures, and as the pandemic is still raging in many countries, cold-chain food and its packaging could be carriers for cross-border transmission of the novel coronavirus, said Li Ning, deputy director of the China National Center for Food Safety Risk Assessment.

The positive rate for the virus in cold-chain food and its packages is relatively low and the increasing incidents of positive testing recently is due to increasing testing, Li said.

Only 0.0048 percent of cold-chain food has tested positive as of now and the virus is largely detected on food packages, she added.