China says it needs to improve hygiene found in markets after Beijing COVID-19 outbreak
18 June, 2020
Low standards of hygiene on China's wholesale food markets and vulnerabilities on its food source chain must be urgently addressed after a new COVID-19 outbreak on Beijing, a leading body of the ruling Communist Party stated.
The resurgence of COVID-19 in the country's capital in the last week, infecting a lot more than 100 people and raising fears of wider contagion, has been from the city's significant Xinfadi food centre.
The Communist Party's top disciplinary body said the outbreak underlined the urgent have to improve sanitation standards and minimise health risks at markets.
"The epidemic is a mirror that not only reflects the dirty and messy areas of wholesale markets but also their low-level operations circumstances," the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) said in a report published on its internet site on Wednesday (Jun 17).
China's sprawling food markets have emerged as an ideal breeding surface for the coronavirus, which includes now infected more than 8 million persons worldwide. The first significant cluster of infections was traced to the Huanan seafood industry in Wuhan, where bats and different wild animals were thought to be on sale.
The CCDI report noted that the majority of the market segments were built 20 to 30 years back, when drainage and wastewater treatment was relatively undeveloped.
An Yufa, a professor at China Agricultural University, was cited in the record as saying the marketplaces must follow foreign practice and implement origin tracing systems and also documentation on storage, transport and sale.
Officials found in Wuhan province took 3,000 samples from tools, chopping boards and drains found in 114 farmers' markets and 107 supermarkets this week to check on for potential new resources of infection. All came up negative, they explained.
China features promised to ban the trade and consumption and wildlife in a good bid to minimise disease transmission, though the consumption of wild animal products found in traditional medicine it's still permitted.
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