Key points:
- World Health Organisation (WHO) earlier said that the risk of coronavirus from frozen food remains lows.
- Over 7,500 people who may have contacted contaminated product are Covid-19 negative.
- China is the world’s top beef buyer.
World Health Organisation (WHO) earlier said that the risk of coronavirus from frozen food remains lows. but China has repeatedly sounded alarms after detecting the virus on imported food products, triggering disruptive import bans.
The eastern Chinese city of Jinan said it has found the novel coronavirus on beef and tripe, and on packaging for these products, from Brazil, New Zealand and Bolivia as China ramps up testing on frozen foods.
The importers were a unit of Guotai International Group and Shanghai Zhongli Development Trade, news agency Reuters quoted the Jinan Municipal Health Commission as saying.
The entry ports were Shanghai’s Yangshan port customs and outer port customs, it said. The statement from the city in Shandong province did not name the companies that shipped the products.
Over 7,500 people who may have had contact with the contaminated products and other related personnel have tested negative for the virus that causes COVID-19, it said.
Earlier on Saturday, the western Chinese city of Lanzhou said it had detected the Covid-19 virus on the packaging of a batch of shrimp imported from Saudi Arabia.
China is the world’s top beef buyer and Brazil and Argentina its largest suppliers.
Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province in central China, detected coronavirus on the outer packaging of frozen pork from Argentina on Friday, local authorities said in a statement late on Saturday on the social media platform WeChat.
The samples that tested positive came from a 24-tonne batch of frozen pork that was sent from a cold storage facility in Qingdao port to a warehouse for a market in Zhengzhou city.
The batch was found to be contaminated during a screening before the goods could enter the warehouse, the government said.
