Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 Dec;2(4):199-201.
doi: 10.1016/j.bsheal.2020.11.003. Epub 2020 Nov 19.

Cold-chain transportation in the frozen food industry may have caused a recurrence of COVID-19 cases in destination: Successful isolation of SARS-CoV-2 virus from the imported frozen cod package surface

Peipei Liu  1 , Mengjie Yang  1 , Xiang Zhao  1 , Yuanyuan Guo  2 , Liang Wang  3 , Jing Zhang  1 , Wenwen Lei  1 , Weifang Han  1 , Fachun Jiang  4 , William J Liu  1 , George F Gao  1   3 , Guizhen Wu  1
Affiliations

Cold-chain transportation in the frozen food industry may have caused a recurrence of COVID-19 cases in destination: Successful isolation of SARS-CoV-2 virus from the imported frozen cod package surface

Peipei Liu et al. Biosaf Health. 2020 Dec.

Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has spread in 220 countries/regions to wreak havoc to human beings around the world. At present, the second wave of COVID-19 has begun in many European countries. The complete control of COVID-19 is very urgent. Although China quickly brought the virus under control, there have been eight sporadic outbreaks in China since then. Both in Xinfadi of Beijing and Dalian outbreak of COVID-19, environmental swab samples related to imported cold chain food were tested nucleic acid positive for SARS-CoV-2. In this outbreak in Qingdao, we directly isolated SARS-CoV-2 from the cod outer package's surface swab samples. This is the first time worldwide, SARS-CoV-2 were isolated from the imported frozen cod outer package's surface, which showed that imported frozen food industry could import SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Keywords: COVID-19; Cod outer package; Frozen food; SARS-CoV-2.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Cytopathic effects in Vero-E6 cell cultures after inoculation with cod outer package surface swab samples. A. Six days after the passage 2 in Vero-E6 cell, cytopathic effects were observed with a 10×objective lens; B. negative control were observed with a 10×objective lens.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Phylogeny of isolated SARS-CoV-2 and corresponding original samples from Qingdao based on the full-length genome sequences of the COVID-19 virus. The virus isolated from workers and cod package surface along with the corresponding original samples are indicated with red and cyan characters, respectively.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Probable route of transmission for SARS-CoV-2 through cold-chain transportation in the frozen food industry. Frozen food and outer package were contaminated with SARS-CoV-2 during processing and packaging. Through cold-chain transportation with low temperature (such as -20°C), SARS-CoV-2 survived and then infected stevedores or peddlers after reaching the destination.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment in

References

    1. Zhao X., Xu J., Zhang Y., Wang D., Dai W., Jiao G., Shiwen W., Wang S., Liu J., Chen C., Chen S., Yan S., Hua H., Gao G.F., Xu W., Wu G. A reemergent case of COVID-19 — Harbin City, Heilongjiang Province, China, April 9, 2020. China CDC Weekly. 2020;2(25):460–462. doi: 10.46234/ccdcw2020.127. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Chen C., Zhao X., Wang D., Li J., Wang A., Wu D., Chen Z., Wu Y., Meng Y., Shi W., Gao G.F., Wu G., Huang B., Xu W. The initial case of COVID-19 — Shulan City, Jilin Province, China, May 8, 2020. China CDC Weekly. 2020;2(25):458–459. doi: 10.46234/ccdcw2020.115. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Chen C., Ma H., Jia Z., Zhao X., Wang D., Zhao J., Gao Z., Liu P., Song Y., Chen Z., Wu Y., Meng Y., Wu G., Xu W., Fan X., Zhang Y. Reemergent cases of COVID-19 — Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, China, July 16, 2020. China CDC Weekly. 2020;2(39):761–763. doi: 10.46234/ccdcw2020.206. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bo Z., Zhao X., Mao L., Zhang J., Zhang Y., Song Y., Wang H., Wang J., Chen C., Xiao J., Ji T., Yang Q., Xu W., Wang D., Yao W. Reemergent cases of COVID-19 — Dalian City, Liaoning Province, China, July 22, 2020. China CDC Weekly. 2020;2(34):658–660. doi: 10.46234/ccdcw2020.182. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Fisher D., Reilly A., Zheng A.K.E., Cook A.R., Anderson D.E. Seeding outbreaks of COVID-19 by contaminated fresh and frozen food. bioRxiv. 2020 doi: 10.1101/2020.08.17.255166. 2020.2008.2017.255166. - DOI

LinkOut - more resources