Previously, it was reported that there was no evidence that coronavirus could be spread from salmon fish.
Today, an update to this hypothesis has arisen.
And it does not look very promising.
Surviving On Salmon
According to SCMP, a team of Chinese researchers recently found that the coronavirus which causes Covid-19 can survive for more than a week on a type of fish.
And you guessed it: it’s salmon.
Most of the time, the fish we buy is also chilled or frozen.
Normally, the virus can only last two days if the fish is kept at 25 deg C.
The researchers discovered that the virus remained infectious for eight days after being kept at a temperature of 4 deg C.
And unsurprisingly, salmon is often kept at the latter temperature to facilitate the product’s transport.
They found this out through buying fish from a shop in Guangzhou and cut the meat into small cubes.
These cubes were treated with a solution containing virus particles and stored at different temperatures. Each day a sample was taken out for a test to see if the virus could infect normal cells.
But before you start going crazy and throw all the salmon out of your freezer, note that this is a non-peer-reviewed paper.
Basically, it’s like at O-Level where they submit their exam papers but it’s not marked yet by a teacher who’s an expert in the field.
The paper by Dr Dai Manman and his team also revealed that it takes roughly a week for transport to arrive in another country.
“This calls for strict inspection or detection of (the coronavirus) as a critical new protocol in fish importation and exportation before allowing sales.”
Fun fact: it was also revealed that the virus’ official name was Sars-CoV-2.
Not that it makes anything better.
Seafood Related Outbreaks
There have been two instances of this happening.
The initial coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan originated from a wet market that sold seafood.
More specifically: in the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan at the end of last year.
A second spread was then found in Beijing around June, on salmon chopping boards at Xinfadi market. This was also when salmon was ruled out as a transmission source.
These imports of salmon have directly affected other countries as well.
The fishing industry reports that roughly 40,000 to 100,000 tonnes of salmon were imported from China yearly before the pandemic.
Most of these then land in the world’s largest salmon markets such as Norway and Chile.
The former has around 11,521 cases as of 8 Sept and Chile has a whopping 424,274 cases.
Non-Seafood-Related Incidents
Chinese Customs also caught the virus in imported food products such as shrimp and chicken wings.
The Singapore Food Agency has also responded to the issue, which you can check out below:
The US military showed the virus could stay infectious for at least two weeks on pigs’ skin at 4 deg C and four days at room temperature.
Now, let’s wait for SFA’s response before we start throwing salmon out of our freezers.
We can only hope the virus cases slows down over the course of the year, just as they’re doing for Singapore so far.
Speaking about food being more than what they seem, are you interested in seeing a cake that looks like roast pork?
Because believe it or not, that’s what appeared on the internet just recently.
Here’s a simplified summary of the South Korea martial law that even a 5-year-old would understand:
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