BResidents of the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou now have to take a PCR test if they have received mail from abroad. This is no joke, but the latest measure in China’s fight against omicron. The recipients of such programs are automatically asked by SMS to be tested, reports the “Guangzhou Daily”. The local disease control agency seems to be well informed about who in the city receives a package from abroad and when. The authority also recommends minimizing such orders as much as possible and, if it is too late for that, to wear mouth and nose protection and gloves when opening the shipment. “Be careful when unpacking, do not squeeze the package and use damp cloths to wipe the packaging,” are the official recommendations of the disease protection agency.
The idea that the corona virus could come to China by post from abroad was put into the world by the Beijing disease control agency a week ago. She was under pressure to explain how the Omicron variant was able to find its way into the well-protected Chinese capital. Because the woman who was the first Beijing omicron case to be registered has not left the city recently and therefore cannot have brought the virus to the country, the contact tracers referred to the usual suspects: abroad. The infected woman had received a DHL shipment from Canada, which arrived in Beijing via Hong Kong in four days. Wipe samples taken from the envelope and the documents inside were “positive”. The Beijing authorities have also identified a foreign origin for a current delta cluster in the city. They are due to imported frozen food, it is insinuated.
Little doubt about the contagious letter from Canada
The World Health Organization has repeatedly described infection via surfaces as “highly unlikely”. Scientists do not want to completely rule out this possibility. However, in the two years since it first floated the deep-freeze theory, China has never provided verifiable data that would allow foreign scientists to test its credibility, despite inquiries. “Even more problematic is that Corona is constantly being attributed to foreign factors, as if the virus were not native to China. You have to see that in the context of the ongoing dispute over the origin of the virus,” says a foreign observer in Beijing.
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In the meantime, this view has become so firmly established in the Chinese public that hardly any doubts can be heard about the thesis of the contagious letter from Canada. In some foreign companies, the secretary is now said to refuse to open the mail. At best, vague objections have been heard from Chinese scientists.
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