China orders disinfection of international mail due to risk of covid

The postal service of China ordered its employees to systematically disinfect couriers from abroad, after authorities raised the hypothesis that a courier from Canada may have transported the omicron variant to the country.

(Read here: Hong Kong will sacrifice some 2,000 hamsters after detecting cases of covid-19)

With less than three weeks to go before the Winter Olympics start in Beijing, authorities fear their “zero covid” policy could be undermined by a series of limited outbreaks that have been detected in the country.

(Also: Citizens in China trade home appliances for food)

China, the first country where the new coronavirus was detected in late 2019, has infections under control, but has been facing some sporadic outbreaks for a few weeks, despite the fact that the number of new daily cases rarely rises above 200.

The last weekend, Beijing identified the first case of the contagious omicron variant in a person who received a letter from Canada on which there were traces of the virus.

On Monday, the postal service published a regulation that directs employees to disinfect all packages arriving from abroad and requires that workers who handle these shipments receive a booster dose of the anticovid vaccine.

In addition, citizens were called on to reduce their orders and purchases from “countries and regions with high risk of covid”, the Chinese postal service announced.

The covid is spread through small particles exhaled by an infected person and the World Health Organization (WHO) maintains that the risk of getting it from touching contaminated surfaces is low and decreases as the virus is exposed.

AFP

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