German knuckles ‘ scapegoat’ for N. American pig heads
A health official in North China’s Tianjin, who has been dubbed China’s Sherlock Holmes, has cracked the mysterious case of the latest COVID- 19 infections in the municipality and helped “clear the name” of German pork knuckles, which were previously believed to be the source of recent infections.
Zhang Ying, a deputy director at the Tianjin Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, outlined the epidemiological investigation at Tuesday’s media briefing and said recent infections were caused by pig heads from North America, which contaminated pork knuckles from Germany.
Zhang noted that the center had received reports from Dezhou, East China’s Shandong Province, that a batch of pork knuckles imported from Germany via a Tianjin port was coronavirus- positive. Tianjin then screened Hailian Frozen Food Co and found two confirmed patients, a loader of the knuckles and a truck driver.
Many people then believed that the pork knuckles from Germany must be the source of the recent infections, while the German side felt wronged. The German Ministry for Food and Agriculture said it was unlikely that German pork knuckles had triggered infections in China.
Further investigations found that the driver had no direct contact with the pork knuckles – but had transported pig heads from North America. The loader had handled both the pig heads and the knuckles.
The same worker wearing the same pair of gloves and clothes then carried the pork knuckles the next day, which resulted in a positive result for the pork knuckles’ packaging in Dezhou, Zhang said.
The recent infections in Tianjin were caused by pig heads imported from North America, which contaminated the German pork knuckles while they were in the same loading platform before being stored in different zones, Zhang said.
Zhang and her team were assigned a new role of looking for clues involved with each imported case after such cases appeared in China several months ago.
Zhang had successfully located the sources of several imported cases after investigations, earning her the nickname of China’s Sherlock Holmes.