The new outbreak virus in Beijing comes from cold chain imported food

Combined with comprehensive epidemiological investigation and big data analysis, the researchers revealed that the virus source in the concentrated epidemic situation in Xinfadi market in Beijing is very likely to be cold chain imported food in overseas epidemic areas, and proposed that cold chain transportation may be a new way for SARS-CoV-2 to spread.

On June 11, 2020, a case of SARS-CoV-2 infection suddenly appeared, breaking the calm of no new cases in Beijing for 56 consecutive days. The patient was admitted to hospital immediately, and his condition was quickly controlled, but it became a mystery where he was infected with the virus.

The chilled salmon is the only product from overseas in the goods sold at booth S14. Perciò, the researchers sampled and tested the cold storage of all salmon suppliers in Xinfadi market, and found that five fish swab samples from a supplier were positive for SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid, and the virus genome sequence obtained from sequencing of one unopened fish swab sample was highly homologous to the virus in human and environmental samples in this epidemic.