Expert Plays Down Fears Of Virus Links To Seafood

A Hong Kong University microbiologist has said fish vendors at two wet markets who were confirmed to have contracted Covid-19 were likely to have caught the virus from visitors to the market, playing down fears of seafood contamination.

Professor Yuen Kwok-yung made the comments outside Hung Hom Market, shortly after the Centre for Health Protection confirmed that fish stall vendors in Hung Hom and To Kwa Wan wet markets were among the confirmed cases on Tuesday.

The markets were shut from 5pm on Tuesday for Yuen and his team to collect samples and for disinfection. They'll remain closed until at least Friday.

Samples from some of the chopping boards and sewers are to be tested by experts.

Yuen said that there were a number of possibilities on how the virus could have spread in the market, but that the chances of it being spread through the fish were very low.

He said that the new coronavirus can survive for a long time in a wet environment, so it's possible someone with Covid-19 may have sneezed or spat inside the market.

Yuen also said that when market vendors had their break in the afternoon, some might have gone to the food court on the third floor for a meal where they took off their masks, causing human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus.

“I don’t think the public have to worry, I think there should be no problems eating fish or seafood, the most important is to cook things really well,” he said.

Major outbreaks earlier this year on the mainland were linked to wet markets. In Wuhan, where the outbreak started, experts have pointed to a wet market which sold exotic meat as a possible source of the infections.

Norwegian salmon came under scrutiny on the mainland after a June outbreak in Beijing was linked to the Xinfadi meat market in the capital.

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