Cold-chain transportation in the frozen food industry may have caused a recurrence of COVID-19 cases in destination: Successful isolation of SARS-CoV-2 virus from the imported frozen cod package surface

Peipei Liu; Mengjie Yang; Xiang Zhao; Yuanyuan Guo; Liang Wang; Jing Zhang; Wenwen Lei; Weifang Han; Fachun Jiang; William J Liu; George F Gao; Guizhen Wu

doi:10.1016/j.bsheal.2020.11.003

Cold-chain transportation in the frozen food industry may have caused a recurrence of COVID-19 cases in destination: Successful isolation of SARS-CoV-2 virus from the imported frozen cod package surface

Biosaf Health. 2020 Dec;2(4):199-201. doi: 10.1016/j.bsheal.2020.11.003. Epub 2020 Nov 19.

Authors

Peipei Liu¹, Mengjie Yang¹, Xiang Zhao¹, Yuanyuan Guo², Liang Wang³, Jing Zhang¹, Wenwen Lei¹, Weifang Han¹, Fachun Jiang⁴, William J Liu¹, George F Gao^{1

3}, Guizhen Wu¹

Affiliations

¹ NHC Key Laboratory of Biosafety, National Institute for Viral Disease Control and Prevention, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Beijing 102206, China.
² School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Nanjing Tech University, No. 30 South Puzhu Road, Nanjing 211816, China.
³ CAS Key Laboratory of Pathogenic Microbiology and Immunology, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing 100101, China.
⁴ Qingdao Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Qingdao 266011, China.

Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has spread in 220 countries/regions to wreak havoc to human beings around the world. At present, the second wave of COVID-19 has begun in many European countries. The complete control of COVID-19 is very urgent. Although China quickly brought the virus under control, there have been eight sporadic outbreaks in China since then. Both in Xinfadi of Beijing and Dalian outbreak of COVID-19, environmental swab samples related to imported cold chain food were tested nucleic acid positive for SARS-CoV-2. In this outbreak in Qingdao, we directly isolated SARS-CoV-2 from the cod outer package's surface swab samples. This is the first time worldwide, SARS-CoV-2 were isolated from the imported frozen cod outer package's surface, which showed that imported frozen food industry could import SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Keywords: COVID-19; Cod outer package; Frozen food; SARS-CoV-2.