Chinese lawmakers have come up with an implausible theory: the new coronavirus did not originate in China, but was imported from Europe. That’s what a former chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention said at an academic conference last fall. One theory is that the virus invaded Wuhan in frozen food packaging.
This month, the World Health Organization visited China to investigate the origins of the virus. A member of the WHO delegation said it is “possible that a frozen carcass has been shipped” to China and introduced the virus, giving some validation to the idea of food packaging. The reports suggested that China required WHO to agree that it would investigate the food hypothesis as a condition for entering Wuhan. By giving credit to this unlikely theory, WHO is undermining confidence in the important project to discover the origin of the virus.
The most common culprit cited by the Chinese authorities is frozen salmon, although officials have also suggested that the virus may have hitched a ride on frozen cod, pork heads or other products. In response, Beijing suspended imports of some food products and introduced inspections and testing of frozen foods, which often slowed imports from the United States and Europe.
The US Food and Drug Administration gave its opinion last week with a strong statement. “There is no reliable evidence of food or associated food packaging or as a likely source of viral transmission,” said Acting Commissioner Janet Woodcock in an update from Covid on Thursday.
Other scientific bodies have reached similar conclusions. The International Commission for Microbiological Specifications for Food stated: “Despite the billions of meals and food packages handled since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has to date been no evidence that food, food packaging or food handling is a important source or route of transmission. ”More than 100 million cases of Covid have been diagnosed worldwide and, outside of China, not a single case has been traced to food or food packaging.