As of Tuesday, five fishing boats at fishing port at Qingdao, East China's Shandong Province have brought back about 35 tons of shrimp and fish to boost market supply. Photo: cnsphoto

The outer packaging of imported frozen shrimps in a logistics park in Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality tested positive for COVID-19 on Tuesday. 

The latest case came after those reported in two coastal cities - Dalian, Northwest China's Liaoning Province and Xiamen, East China's Fujian Province - raising the urgency of stepping up prevention of imported infections through the food supply chain.

"The anti-epidemic leadership team in Shapingba district in Chongqing city carried out a comprehensive investigation on frozen South American white shrimps imported from Ecuador and found the outer packaging of some products in a cold storage warehouse in the Western Logistics Park tested positive," said a notice issued by the team.

The team said it had wasted no time in sealing the relevant products, asking people who had contact with the products to undergo home quarantines and conducting nucleic acid testing for products, personnel and environment related to the virus discovery.

The local authority declined to give further information when reached by the Global Times on Wednesday.

This incident in Chongqing, an inland city, might suggest that more products were contaminated through the cold chain, compared with previous positive cases that were still sealed in containers when intercepted by customs, Yang Meng, an industry insider, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

"Transportation from a port city to Chongqing might take around three days, and it involves unloading from shipping containers and reloading to the cold chain systems," Yang said. 

"It is safe to say that more products have been exposed to COVID-19 cases and they will be harder to track."

Yang, who is also the owner of a seafood importing company, said the cases in inland cities will pose an even bigger threat to his business than previous cases.

China's General Administration of Customs announced on Friday that six positive virus results were found on the outside packaging and inner walls of the containers carrying frozen shrimps that were imported from Ecuador. It then suspended imports from three companies in Ecuador.

Global Times