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
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.