Is it safe to eat salmon? Is the coronavirus spread through food?

China blames European salmon for the outbreak that has caused a new confinement in Beijing. After two months without any local cases, more than 100 new cases have been detected that point to a zero zone: the xinfadi market in the capital. According to the country's authorities, traces of the virus have been found in the tables where the imported fish. Flights have been suspended, movement restrictions have been imposed and the importation of this fish, one of those foods that strengthen the immune system, has been banned. It has returned to panic: Is it safe to eat salmon? Can they be foods that transmit the coronavirus?

The information from China on the responsibility or not of salmon in this new crisis is contradictory. Purchases of salmon from Chile have been canceled, but on Tuesday the 16th the director of the emergency center for the control and prevention of diseases in the Asian country explained that "there was no evidence" that the salmon was a transmitter of the virus, and that everything points to contagion person to person and through contaminated objects.

Experts say: is it possible that the coronavirus is spread through food?

In Spain, the food safety expert of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), Alfonso Carrascosa, explained to the EFE agency that looks very unlikelythat the salmon is responsible for the outbreak. It points out that viruses need living cells to survive and transmit themselves, and more so in the case of a respiratory virus such as COVID-19.

The head of the emergency program of the whoMike Ryan explained at a press conference that he is "reluctant" to accept the hypothesis that the new outbreak comes from imported salmon. The official position of the World Health Organization Regarding coronavirus and food has not changed since April, when they published provisional guidelines for food companies and pointed out: "It is very unlikely that the COVID-19 is transmitted through food or packaging of food products "according to the available scientific evidence.

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Both the United States National Food and Drug Authority and its Center for Disease Control and Prevention state that there are very little chance that the virus can spread through food or packaging. The same is the opinion of experts in food security in Norway, one of the countries most affected by the salmon veto, along with Chile.