Officials said they will step up disinfection of international parcels and insist that staff handling the packages are fully vaccinated.
The precautions come less than three weeks before the capital opens the Winter Olympics and several Chinese cities are working to suppress new outbreaks of coronavirus infections.
“Minimize purchases of international goods and receipt of correspondence from abroad,” state television CCTV said on Monday (18), in a post on social media.
“Be sure to protect yourself during in-person deliveries and wear masks and gloves; try to open the package outdoors”.
Health officials said the person infected with the Omicron variant opened a package from Canada that was routed through the United States and Hong Kong, and transmission through the package “cannot be ruled out”.
The case highlighted the importance of “individual protection,” CCTV said.
Similar suggestions on how to handle parcels, not just those from abroad, were made by the National Health Commission on its official WeChat account and reposted by officials in the cities of Shanghai and Nanjing.
China has been an exception in saying that Covid-19 can be transmitted through imports of cold items such as frozen meat and fish, although the World Health Organization (WHO) has said the risk is low. Beijing has also been promoting a narrative through state media that the virus existed abroad before it was discovered in late 2019 in the central city of Wuhan.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said last year that the relative risk of coronavirus infections through contact with surfaces or objects is considered low.
Without all the evidence, it’s hard to draw conclusions for sure, but some scientists questioned Beijing’s theory on Tuesday.
David Heymann, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said it was unclear how the virus could possibly survive in the mail once it spreads via droplets surrounded by moisture and is no longer infectious. when dry.
When asked by CNBC about the idea that Omicron had been introduced to China by mail, Pfizer board member and former head of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Scott Gottlieb said he didn’t think it was plausible. .
“Sounds like a lot of theory,” he said.
In recent weeks, China has been battling a resurgence of cases in several cities, some of them of the highly transmissible variant. On Tuesday, it reported 127 new cases with confirmed symptoms.
The State Post Office issued a notice on Monday stating that international mail must be disinfected after arriving in China, and employees who process and deliver international mail must have received Covid-19 vaccines and a booster.
The China Post is also reminding recipients of foreign mail to disinfect content “in a timely manner” with stickers affixed to parcels.
Reference: CNN Brasil
