Tue 31 August 2021:
The coronavirus disease may have entered Wuhan via frozen food imported from another country, according to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
The first cases were recorded in Wuhan in December 2019, with the original patients being linked in some manner to regional seafood markets. The location of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in the city, however, led some to believe that the virus had escaped from the facility. Beijing has been rejecting such claims with vigour.
“We conducted epidemiological investigations, nucleic acid testing, antibody detections, cold-chain food retrospection and comparative analysis of viral gene sequencing of COVID-19 patients and food packages and confirmed that the virus was imported from other countries or regions through cold-chain transportation,” CDC official Ma Huilai told the Global Times.
The official went on to say the evidence confirms that the coronavirus can be transported across long distances with frozen food and demonstrates the possibility that “the outbreak in Wuhan’s Huanan seafood market in December 2019 might have been sparked by cold-chain imports.”
In March, the WHO published a report of the first fact-finding mission of its experts to Wuhan. Experts concluded that the virus escaping from the state-run laboratory in Wuhan was “extremely unlikely.” They also said that there was a strong possibility that the virus was transmitted to humans from bats through another animal.
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