China suspends fish imports from India after detection of coronavirus on samples

China on Friday suspended fish imports from India for one week. The decision was made by the Chinese Customs office after it detected novel coronavirus on three samples taken from the outer packaging of frozen cuttlefish.

This suspension on imports from India’s Basu International will resume automatically after one week, a report by Reuters quoted China’s General Administration of Customs to say.

In September of this year, China isolated coronavirus contamination on packages stored by a seafood importer. This was discovered during an examination of Covid-19 outbreak in the Chinese city of Qingdao.

China had threatened a week’s suspension of imports from companies whose food products are found contaminated with Covid-19. The penalty for third-time offenders could extend to four weeks of suspension on imports, the Chinese authorities had said.

However, the coronavirus isolated and detected on these food packaging samples was very little in amount and not living.

It was only in October that the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a statement saying that contact with frozen food packaging contaminated by living new coronavirus could cause infection.

In a statement, the Chinese CDC cited the case of two dock workers in Qingdao who handled frozen food packaging and were diagnosed with Covid-19. Asymptomatic, the workers were not quarantined and infected at least 12 others at a chest hospital in the eastern Chinese city.