China urges WHO to study version of COVID-19 importation in food boxes

Experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of China asked the World Health Organization to check the version that employees who supplied frozen food to Wuhan could have brought the coronavirus. This is reported by the Global Times.

Several sporadic, random outbreaks have been identified in China in 2020 that are associated with imported cold chain products from other parts of the world, including Europe and the Americas, according to the publication. It turned out that in many of these places signs of COVID-19 were detected earlier than in Wuhan. In March, a joint WHO-China report on the origin of COVID-19 was published, in which this version was called possible.

According to Chinese CDC spokesman Ma Huilai, as a result of research and comparative analysis of sequencing (determining the DNA and RNA sequence to clarify the diagnosis) of viral genes of COVID-19 patients and food packages, it was confirmed that the virus was imported from other countries or regions through the "cold chain". Wuhan was one of the cities where shipments of frozen pork from Brazil and beef imported from Uruguay tested positive for coronavirus in December 2020.

Recently, the US National Intelligence Office published the findings of a declassified report on the study of the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. Firstly, the virus, according to the report, was not developed by China as a biological weapon, and secondly, Chinese officials did not have information about the virus until its first outbreaks appeared. Also, most intelligence agencies have concluded that the coronavirus was not created using genetic engineering methods, although some have stated that there is insufficient evidence for this hypothesis.