Chinese policy makers have adopted an unlikely theory: the new coronavirus did not come from 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 entered Wuhan on 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 that “a frozen carcass may have been shipped” to China and introduced the virus, giving some validation to the idea of food packaging. The report suggested that China had asked the WHO to agree to investigate the food hypothesis as a condition of entry into Wuhan. By giving credence to this unlikely theory, WHO is undermining confidence in the important project of finding out where the virus came from.
The most frequently cited culprit by Chinese officials is frozen salmon, although officials have also suggested that the virus could have taken a walk with frozen cod, pork heads or other products. In response, Beijing suspended food imports and introduced inspections and tests of frozen foods, which frequently supported imports from the US and Europe.
The US Food and Drug Administration weighed in last week with a strong statement. “There is no credible evidence of food or associated food packaging or as a likely source of viral transmission,” Acting Commissioner Janet Woodcock said in a Covid update on Thursday.
Other scientific bodies have reached similar conclusions. The International Commission on Microbiological Specifications for Foods stated: “Despite billions of meals and packets of food handled since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, so far there has been no evidence that food, packaging or food handling is a source or pathway. important transmission. “More than 100 million cases of Covid have been diagnosed worldwide, and no case has been tracked in food or food packaging outside of China.