China starts COVID-19 tests on seafood markets

Major seafood markets in China have launched massive nucleic acid tests for their working staff and environmental samples as a quick response to the new COVID-19 outbreak in Beijing which was uncovered at the city’s largest wholesale food market last week.

Although there’s no proof that salmon was the source of the sudden spike in Beijing, the latest research shows that the virus “came from Europe,” and virologists believe the epidemic was most likely caused by contaminated food.

Several seafood traders reached by the Global Times on Monday said their packages are sealed at the local customs for nucleic acid tests, and they fear the losses from the spike would be “huge” as it is very difficult to store fresh produce, while requests to cancel or postpone their orders have risen.

Industrial insiders noted that the incident in Xinfadi

market in southern Beijing’s Fengtai district will have a huge impact on the imported seafood market across China and the world supply chain. However, given the authorities’ competence in handling the matter, such an impact would be temporary.

They noted that the latest outbreak is also a reminder to major seafood exporters to China to strengthen their health quarantine and product quality.

Striking a blow

Market administration officials in Beijing’s Haidian district launched a surprise inspection on one of the district’s largest agricultural markets on Monday morning. The operations of the seafood stores in the market were suspended.

Cities including Wuhan in Hubei Province, Guangzhou, South China’s Guangdong Province, Tianjin municipality, Chengdu in Southwest China’s Sichuan Province, Ningbo in East China’s Zhejiang Province also conducted nucleic acid tests on the wholesale market employees and environmental samples, especially salmon at seafood and frozen meat wholesale markets and restaurants. All these tests also came up negative. Many supermarkets and restaurants in China have taken salmon off their shelves and sealed them for further inspection.

Cui He, the president of the China Aquatic Products Processing and Marketing Alliance, told the Global Times on Monday that seafood exporters will be hit hard as imported salmon takes up to 85 percent of the domestic market, with 80,000-100,000 tons of salmon being imported every year.

The world seafood supply chain will be further affected by the incident as China plays an important role in the global consumption of seafood, Cui said.

China has strict management and quarantine regulations on imported aquatic products, but novel coronavirus detection has not been included, news site yicai.com reported on Saturday, citing an employee from the General Administration of Customs.

But the employee said it does not mean it will not add the test in the future.

Eason Li, the China general manager of Hofseth International, a Norway-based seafood producer, told the Global Times on Monday that the Beijing Customs has stopped imports of all seafood products, while Shanghai has raised quarantine requirements for imported salmon. Beginning Saturday, each batch of imported salmon must undergo nucleic acid tests at the Shanghai Customs. The higher quarantine requirements would extend the shipping process by about one to two days, Li said.

A seafood insider told the Global Times on Monday that she got a statement from the Norwegian Seafood Council reminding the public that the Norwegian Food Safety Authority (NFSA) is clear that the coronavirus does not affect seafood safety, as there are no known cases of infections through contaminated food, imported food or water. Therefore, fish and seafood products from Norway are safe to eat.

He also shared a statement from Salmon Chile, which represents all Chilean salmon producers, to talk about some measures that the salmon industry in Chile has been taking since the virus hit the country.

Europe as origin?

Yang Peng, an expert at the Beijing Center for Diseases Prevention and Control (Beijing CDC), told media on Sunday that the genome sequencing of the strain of the coronavirus which caused the new outbreak in Beijing shows it originated from Europe.

Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told the People’s Daily on Monday that from the structure of the virus, the strain is unlike those found in Beijing two months ago. It is most likely from Europe.

“However, this does not mean the virus came from European countries. Analyses of the virus strain in the US showed most of them came from Europe, or from Russia. The preliminary results mean the virus in this new outbreak may have come from Europe, Russia, or North America. More information needs to be collected,” Wu said.

The genome sequencing is “solid evidence” that the source of infection in Beijing may be from abroad, Yang Zhanqiu, deputy director of the pathogen biology department at Wuhan University, told the Global Times on Monday.

The possibility of imported contaminated seafood or meat entering the Chinese market after packaging and cold-chain transportation from contaminated overseas countries is quite high, Yang said, adding that the virus could survive for months on contaminated seafood or meat in temperatures between -10 C and -30 C.