⁍ China’s disease control authority said on Saturday that contact with frozen food packaging contaminated by living new coronavirus could cause infection.

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⁍ CDC detected and isolated living coronavirus on outer packaging of frozen cod.

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⁍ The finding suggests it is possible for the virus to be conveyed over long distances via frozen goods.

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– China has detected a new coronavirus on the outer packaging of frozen cod, a first-of-its-kind finding that suggests the disease could spread through frozen food, Reuters reports. The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention says the virus was detected after two dock workers in the city of Qingdao were diagnosed with asymptomatic infections last month. They brought the virus to a hospital during quarantine, leading to another 12 infections linked to the hospital, authorities said last week. However, the CDC’s latest statement does not show solid proof that the two workers in Qingdao caught the virus from the packaging directly, rather than contracting the virus from somewhere else and then contaminating the food packaging they handled, says a virology professor at the University of Hong Kong. The risk of infection from contact with frozen food remains very low, the CDC says, but workers should avoid skin contact with products that could possibly be contaminated. Prior to the CDC’s latest findings genetic traces of the virus had been found in some samples taken from frozen food or food packaging, but the amount of virus was low and no living virus was isolated, the agency said. Only living virus can infect people, while samples containing dead virus could also test positive for virus traces, Jin says.