Beijing: Studies into clusters of Covid-19 cases show that contaminated cold-chain food products are the major cause of the outbreaks, highlighting the need for protection of workers within the industry, experts said.
“Research has indicated that the virus can survive on cold-chain food and packaging during long distance shipping and may cause human infection, in particular to high-risk people such as dockworkers, ” said Liu Zhaoping, a researcher at the China National Centre for Food Safety Risk Assessment.
“But the likelihood of food-to-human transmission is lower than other routes of transmission.”
Investigations into the source of the outbreaks in cities across China, including Beijing and the port cities of Dalian, Liaoning province, and Qingdao, Shandong province, found many of them could be traced to workers at cold storage areas, seafood processing plants and markets selling imported frozen food products, he said.