China has found the trading sections for meat and seafood in Beijing’s wholesale food market to be severely contaminated with the new coronavirus and suspects the area’s low temperature and high humidity may have been contributing factors, officials said on Thursday.

Their preliminary report comes as the country’s capital tackles a resurgence of COVID-19 cases over the past week linked to the massive Xinfadi food center, which houses warehouses and trading halls in an area the size of nearly 160 soccer pitches.
The latest outbreak infected more than 100 people and raised fears of wider contagion in China.

Among the patients who work at the Xinfadi market, most serve at seafood and aquatic product stalls, followed by the beef and mutton section, and patients from the seafood market showed symptoms earlier than others, Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a daily briefing on Thursday.

Low temperatures favorable to viral survival as well as high humidity might be possible explanations for why seafood markets could be a source of outbreaks based on a preliminary assessment, Wu said, cautioning that further investigation was necessary.

China has halted imports from European salmon suppliers this week amid fears they may be linked to the recent outbreak in Beijing.

Health officials have also warned against eating raw salmon after the virus was discovered on chopping boards used for imported salmon, although the origin of the outbreak is not known.

Low standards of hygiene in wholesale food markets and vulnerabilities in its food supply chain need to be urgently addressed, a leading body of the ruling Communist Party said this week.

“There has been a steady decrease in cases we have seen in all four nations, and this continues,” the chief medical officers of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland said.

“It does not mean that the pandemic is over. The virus is still in general circulation, and localised outbreaks are likely to occur.”

With more than 80% of global trade by volume transported by sea, the world’s more than 2 million merchant seafarers play a vital role in keeping countries supplied with everything from raw materials and fuel to food and consumer goods.

Gopinath said the economic crisis triggered by the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic was more global and playing out differently than past crises, with the services sector hit harder than manufacturing in both advanced and emerging market economies, and inflation low across the board.

“Investments held in corporate bonds are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of an economic recession, with some businesses likely to default on payments. Insurers operating in the US are heavily invested in corporate bonds compared to their UK counterparts, and US life insurers in particular are more vulnerable to the downturn – given almost three quarters of their investments are in this area. This is especially true in the life sector where there is a 49.7 percentage-point difference between investments in corporate bonds. It also illustrates that the UK has a certain amount locked up in the relatively safe government securities, while this is not available in the US.”