Allegedly lax coronavirus protocol at a frozen food import warehouse in northeastern China’s Dalian city caused an outbreak of the disease last month, China’s state-run Global Times reported Friday.
“The latest COVID-19 flare-up in November in Dalian, a major port city in Northeast China’s Liaoning Province was caused by law-violating activities of a cold-chain enterprise, with supervisors found in dereliction of duty,” the newspaper relayed on December 3, citing Dalian government officials.
“Covid-19,” also known as the Chinese coronavirus, is the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, a type of coronavirus. Dalian’s latest epidemic of the disease, the Chinese Communist Party claims, emerged on November 4 in a frozen foods warehouse worker and lasted through November 26, resulting in 346 infections.
Dalian’s government said on December 3 it had investigated the outbreak’s origin and found that “the coronavirus contaminated imported food infected cold-chain staff from Dalian Keqiang Food Co, a cold storage and seafood processing company leading to an outbreak of COVID-19 infections in the city.”
Dalian municipal officials did not disclose the specific actions that allegedly led to the outbreak, though they implied that staff at the facility in question failed to adhere to strict anti-virus protocol mandated by the city. Dalian health authorities vowed on December 3 to “improve” operations at the warehouse in question to prevent future outbreaks.
“As a port city, the authorities said they will focus on the entry management and further improve the mechanism for epidemic prevention and control including the whole process closed-loop management of entry personnel and strict disinfection for cold storage facilities,” the Global Times quoted Dalian government officials as saying on Friday.
“Authorities stated that they will address law-breakers and illegal activities showing no leniency,” the newspaper noted ominously.
“There is currently no evidence that people can catch COVID-19 from food or food packaging,” according to the World Health Organization (W.H.O.).
Local Communist Party officials in Dalian ordered “all businesses handling imported chilled and frozen foods to suspend operations” on November 8 in an effort to contain the city’s then-emerging coronavirus outbreak. The business suspension remained in place as of mid-November.
“Dalian is an important cold-chain storage and transportation base in China, with more than 600,000 employees who handle imported cold-chain products,” the Global Times detailed on November 14.
“Nearly 70 percent of imported cold-chain goods enter China through Dalian’s port,” the newspaper noted.
“The facility is the biggest cold storage in China, accounting for nearly one-third of the country’s cold-chain goods storage capacity,” according to the state-run China Central Television (CCTV).
Dalian lies at the southern tip of China’s Liaodong Peninsula, which itself is located in the Yellow Sea. The Yellow Sea lies between China and the Korean Peninsula. Dalian pertains to China’s Liaoning province, which shares a land border with North Korea.
Dalian’s latest coronavirus epidemic is part of a greater nationwide resurgence of the disease that sparked on October 17 after a Chinese tour group from Shanghai traveled to China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in early-to-mid October. Some of the group’s members contracted coronavirus during their trip from an unspecified “foreign source,” according to an official narrative promoted by Chinese state media. Newspapers such as the Global Times, which is published by the Chinese Communist Party, have promoted this theory of an “imported” coronavirus epidemic ravaging China without providing evidence to support the claim.
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