China suspends sales at Asia’s largest wholesale market as it pushes narrative that Covid-19 was imported from abroad
China has suspended sales and storage of cold-chain and aquatic merchandise at a Beijing market – Asia’s largest – linked to a summer season outbreak, as authorities proceed pushing a narrative that the coronavirus was imported from abroad.
Refrigerated meat, seafood and different frozen merchandise have all been tossed at Xinfadi market, situated in a southern district of Beijing. Cold storage services at the market have additionally been disinfected and shut down, in accordance with Chinese state media.
For months, Chinese officers have blamed cluster outbreaks on coronavirus they are saying have been discovered on frozen meals merchandise imported from nations together with the US, EU, New Zealand, Canada, India, Germany and Ecuador.
Many of the nations, nevertheless, have mentioned they’re not sure about China’s methodology in detecting the virus. But that hasn’t stopped Chinese authorities from dashing to check meals merchandise and the employees that deal with them, as nicely as banning imports and disrupting world commerce.
The US has questioned whether or not the crackdown is certainly primarily based in science, particularly as lots of the nations impacted are embroiled in diplomatic spats with Beijing. China typically makes use of economic leverage to punish nations as bilateral tensions rise.
The World Health Organization has additionally mentioned that circumstances of reside viruses being discovered on packaging gave the impression to be “uncommon and remoted”. Other health experts have cautioned against drawing causal links between food packaging and outbreaks – finding traces of virus indicates it is present on a surface, but does not mean it can cause infections.
“I’ve seen no convincing data that SARS-Cov-2 on food packaging poses a significant risk of infection,” said Andrew Pekosz of Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Although the science behind the virus on packaging remains unclear, that has not stopped Beijing from unleashing a sophisticated propaganda campaign to continue pushing its narrative. They argue the coronavirus did not start in Wuhan, but rather originated in the West and exploded when it reached China.
Advancing the line that the virus originated abroad – stoking nationalist pride and anti-foreign sentiment – has allowed Chinese authorities to deflect public anger over its coverup of the pandemic.
“All available evidence suggests that the coronavirus, which has infected more than 59 million people in 190 countries, did not start in central China’s Wuhan,” Chinese state media has proclaimed.
Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist of China’s centre for disease control and prevention, also said recently the pathogen could have entered China through imported frozen seafood or meat products and their packaging.
The World Health Organization mentioned this week it had acquired assurances that worldwide consultants would have the ability to go to China to analyze the origins of the coronavirus after a two-person WHO staff left China following a three-week mission with out being allowed to go to Wuhan.
The WHO delegation then remained in Beijing, sparking concern from western governments over whether or not Beijing would cooperate in worldwide investigations into pandemic origins.
WHO consultants are all for re-interviewing early Covid-19 circumstances and to search out contaminated employees who might present clues on the place they could have picked up the coronavirus.
“There is nothing to indicate that it would be man-made,” mentioned Peter Ben Embarek, a WHO skilled in animal illnesses on Wednesday.
“Before 2019, we don’t really know what happened – we don’t know how the virus jumped from its most probable natural environment in the bat population over to humans. And it’s that bit of history that we need to re construct.”
