China has ordered officials to regularly conduct COVID-19 tests on all workers in wholesale markets across the country to tackle the spread of the coronavirus.
Local health workers must collect swab samples from wholesale markets monthly. Those selling meats and seafood will be tested for the coronavirus once every week, the authorities said in a notice on Thursday.
Market vendors at these food trading hubs must receive throat swabs, or have samples taken from their clothing surfaces and hands.
China has ordered officials to regularly conduct COVID-19 tests on all workers in wholesale markets across the country to tackle the spread of the coronavirus. In this file photo taken on April 24, a female meat vendor tends to her stall at a wholesale food market in Beijing
The national health authorities issued a notice on Thursday, urging local governments to strengthen monitoring the nation’s food trading hubs for the contagion. In this file photo, a worker of Nanming district’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention collects a swab from frozen fish for nucleic acid testing at Wandong market in Guiyang, Guizhou province on July 1
The announcement comes as China has been battling a fresh wave of COVID-19 infections after detecting multiple sporadic regional outbreaks since June.
China’s National Health Commission yesterday released a set of guidelines for wholesale markets as part of the country’s latest efforts to stamp out the virus spread.
The authorities urged local governments to strengthen monitoring the nation’s food trading hubs for the contagion.
Local health workers must collect swab samples from wholesale markets monthly. Those selling meats and seafood are required to receive the tests once every week, the authorities said.
Market vendors working at ‘key stalls’ must receive throat swabs, as well as sample-collecting from their clothing surfaces and hands. Others will have testing samples taken from their hands.
Areas and objects that also need to be tested include freezers, meats and seafood, lifts, stairs, toilets, cleaning tools and offices, according to the notice.
Major wholesale markets that sell frozen and refrigerated meats and seafood, or contain moist and closed spaces, are considered as ‘key monitoring points’.
Market vendors working at ‘key stalls’ must receive throat swabs, as well as sample-collecting from their clothing surfaces and hands. This file photo taken on June 16 shows people receiving tests after an outbreak linked to the Xinfadi wholesale market erupted Beijing
Local health workers must collect swab samples from wholesale markets monthly. This file picture take on June 17 shows a customer shopping at a wholesale market in Beijing
The order comes as China’s top disease-control expert has claimed that the coronavirus could be associated with the trading of seafood after identifying similarities in the country’s first and second waves of COVID-19 outbreaks.
Wu Zunyou, a chief epidemiologist at the Chinese CDC, told state broadcaster CCTV this week that the coronavirus crises in Wuhan, Beijing and Dalian were all linked to seafood markets or processing plants in the regions.
He noted that places dealing with seafood sales could be more susceptible to the virus spread because of their wet and cold environment.
The country where the global outbreak first emerged had largely brought domestic transmission under control through targeted lockdowns, travel restrictions and testing.
But sporadic regional outbreaks have illustrated the difficulty of keeping the virus at bay.
China’s top disease-control expert has claimed that the coronavirus could be associated with the trading of seafood. This picture shows health workers wearing protective gear as they clean and disinfect a wet market at Sham Shui Po, one of the oldest districts in Hong Kong
Areas and objects that also need to be tested include freezers, meats and seafood, lifts, stairs, toilets, cleaning tools and offices, according to the notice. This picture shows a woman removing flies from the meat at a meat stall in a wholesale market in Guangzhou on June 22
Chinese authorities Friday reported 127 new coronavirus cases, bringing the total of confirmed infections to 84,292.
Most of the new patients were native infections found in Xinjiang and Liaoning, two regions that are grappling with escalating local outbreaks.
Last week, a new outbreak emerged at Dalian Kaiyang Seafood, a seafood processing plant in Dalian, a major port city in China’s north-eastern Liaoning province.
The local contagion has since spread to nine cities across the country and infected more than 60 people.
The western Chinese region Xinjiang, home to the country’s most Uighur ethnic minority, detected a local cluster in its regional capital, Urumqi, in mid-July. The contagion link has claimed at least 523 people.
Major supermarkets in China remove South American frozen shrimps off the shelves
Multiple major supermarket chains in China have removed shrimp products imported from South America from their shelves, according to reports.
Companies including Walmart said that they took down the seafood items after Chinese officials claimed that they had found strains of the coronavirus in recent shipments from Ecuador.
It comes as a top disease-control expert in China has claimed that the coronavirus could be associated with the trading of seafood after identifying similarities in the country’s first and second waves of COVID-19 outbreaks.
Multiple major supermarket chains in China have removed all shrimp products imported from South America from their shelves. The file picture taken on June 16 shows frozen seafood products inside a sealed freezer at a supermarket in Beijing
Wu Zunyou, a chief epidemiologist at the Chinese CDC, told state broadcaster CCTV that the coronavirus crises in Wuhan, Beijing and Dalian were all linked to seafood markets or processing plants in the regions.
Wu said on Wednesday: ‘The epidemics in Dalian and Beijing are related to the processing and sales of seafood, and the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan is also related to seafood sales. This is a similarity.
‘These places share common characteristics. [They have] the type of environment that is wet and has low temperatures. This type of environment is suitable for the virus to survive and remain difficult to kill. It would easily cause a risk for spreading.’
Earlier this month, China announced that the country was suspending imports from three Ecuadorean shrimp producers after samples collected from the packaging’s surface tested positive for the disease.
However, tests on the frozen shrimp and inner packaging were negative.