File Photo: VCG

As samples of frozen food in a storage facility in North China’s Tianjin Municipality tested positive for COVID-19, Yancheng, a city in China’s eastern Jiangsu Province returned negative tests for a batch of frozen food that had been in the same facility, according to local authorities.

A rumor began to spread online on Sunday claiming that a hotel in Yancheng had temporarily shut down due to a batch of frozen food that had tested positive for the coronavirus.

Local authorities swiftly responded and found that the same batch of frozen food that tested positive for the virus in Tianjin had been shipped to the city, local health authorities said. Yancheng officials conducted nucleic acid tests on a total of 30 samples of food and packaging, 152 instances of close contacts and 58 environmental samples, all returning negative results, it said, adding that all relevant spaces had since been disinfected. 

The city of Suide in Northwest China’s Shaanxi Province recently identified a batch of hairtail that had tested positive for COVID-19. The contaminated imported hairtail was also transported from Tianjin. Suide conducted nucleic acid test to a total of 2,626 samples, reporting 41 positive results, a local newspaper reported on November 26.

Tianjin recently reported several COVID-19 infections across multiple imported cold-chain storage facilities, the source was later traced to two batches of pig heads imported from North America.

Global Times