Coronavirus: Should you be worried about online shopping from Covid-19 hotspots?
Tuesday, 18 August 2020
New Zealanders shouldn’t get ahead of themselves about the risks of online shopping in the age of coronavirus because there is no evidence to suggest parcels could carry the virus into the country, an epidemiologist says.
Concerns were raised after an Auckland cool store worker and four of his family members tested positive for Covid-19 last week, ending a 102-day stretch with no community transmission.
The possibility the virus could have entered New Zealand on refrigerated freight led health authorities to carry out surface testing at the Americold facility in Mt Wellington.
Confirmed results are due later this week but during the 1pm briefing on Tuesday, director-general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said it “seems clear the possibility is being ruled out”.
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New Zealand epidemiologist Professor Tony Blakely, based at the University of Melbourne, said the chances of the virus entering the country through frozen food were “probably less than 50/50”.
However, if that was found to be the origin of the latest outbreak, it would raise “serious concerns” about the viability of an elimination strategy and border processes would need to be reconsidered.
“You’d have to start thinking about where you imported goods from [and] some form of sterilisation of frozen products as they come in,” he told TVNZ’s Breakfast show on Tuesday.
“Let’s not go too far because it still seems physiologically unlikely, but this virus is so sneaky, you can’t rule anything out.”
Responding to questions from Stuff about the risk of parcels from overseas Covid-19 hotspots carrying the virus, Blakely said it was “perhaps best not to get ahead of ourselves”.
“What is needed first is a probability that this entry was the entry, or even a smoking gun.”
According to the World Health Organisation, Covid-19 can survive for up to 72 hours on plastic and stainless steel, less than four hours on copper and less than 24 hours on cardboard.
However, studies have shown it can survive for several days at low temperatures.
Professor Michael Baker, public health expert at the University of Otago said there was no evidence that refrigerated freight had a role in transmitting Covid-19 between people.
Surfaces that had recently been contaminated with respiratory droplets could also infect people but that mode of transmission was considered much less important than direct respiratory spread.
“This is a respiratory pathogen, and the predominant mode of transmission is through respiratory droplets and aerosols produced by infected people,” he said.
On Monday, Bloomfield said some supermarkets had reported customer concerns about frozen goods.
“New Zealand Food Safety has reviewed the most recent science from around the world about the risk of being infected with Covid-19 through contact with food or food packaging.
“To date, there is no evidence of transmission via food or food packaging.”
Because of the negligible risk, NZFS did not recommend any form of disinfection. However, normal hand hygiene procedures were “always a good idea”.