Taiwan News spoke to an Australian geneticist who publishes scientific papers under the name Zhang Daoyu for his take on the frozen food origin theory. Zhang said that there is no evidence of SARS-CoV-2 circulation anywhere in the world before Wuhan.

Without a location where food could have been laced with the virus, frozen food cannot have been the source, said Zhang. If the virus came from frozen food, the place where it had been shipped from should have suffered an outbreak first.

Zhang said claims that the virus was detected in frozen food involved only positive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests and no evidence of virus isolation.

This indicates that the viral particles were already inactive and not infectious. "They simply cannot produce human infection because they are not active viruses," said Zhang.

As for reports that traces of COVID-19 were found in sewage water in cities such as Barcelona as early as March of 2019, Zhang said these are dubious because the Ct40 rating such reports cite is a very unstable result often associated with false positives. Scientists suspect there may have been cross-contamination or improper storage of the samples in those studies.

Regarding the Barcelona study, Dr. Iren Xagoraraki, an environmental engineer at Michigan State, was cited by The New Year Times as saying, "I don't trust the results." The engineer pointed out that these studies test for different bits of genes of the virus and that not all the genes have shown up.

Last August, a report surfaced of concerns that a worker in a cold storage facility in New Zealand had been infected by frozen food. However, following an investigation, New Zealand health officials stated that the possibility had been "ruled out."

China's claims that additional outbreaks within its borders started from salmon from Norway and chicken wings from Brazil have been consistently debunked. Taiwan's Health Minister and Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) head Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) on Feb. 2 said that coronavirus tests on 408 samples from 104 batches of frozen meats and seafood imported from 10 countries (including China) had all yielded negative results.

Although there is not any evidence of transmission through frozen food over a year into the pandemic, Chen said that there is "one country in the world" (China) that repeatedly reports its frozen food products are testing positive for the coronavirus. Out of Taiwan's 936 confirmed COVID-19 cases, none are believed to have contracted the virus from frozen food, while Taiwan's first seven cases came from Wuhan between Jan. 20 and 22, 2020.

台湾新闻采访了一位澳大利亚遗传学家，他以章道玉的名义发表科学论文，以表彰他对冷冻食品起源理论的理解。张说，在武汉之前的世界任何地方都没有SARS-CoV-2循环的证据。

张说，如果没有食物可以被病毒感染的地方，冷冻食物就不可能成为食物的来源。如果病毒来自冷冻食品，那么运送它的地方应该首先遭受爆发。

张说，声称在冷冻食品中检测到该病毒仅涉及阳性聚合酶链反应（PCR）测试，没有发现病毒分离的迹象。

这表明病毒颗粒已经失活并且没有传染性。张说：“它们根本不能产生人类感染，因为它们不是活性病毒。”

关于最早在2019年3月在巴塞罗那等城市的污水中发现痕量COVID-19的报道，张说，这是令人怀疑的，因为这类报道引用的Ct40评级是非常不稳定的结果，通常与假阳性相关。科学家怀疑在那些研究中可能存在样品的交叉污染或不当存储。

关于巴塞罗那的研究，《新年时报》援引密歇根州立大学的环境工程师Iren Xagoraraki博士的话说：“我不相信结果。” 这位工程师指出，这些研究测试了该病毒基因的不同位，并且并非所有基因都已出现。

去年八月，一份报告浮出水面，担心新西兰冷藏库的一名工人被冷冻食品感染。但是，经过调查，新西兰卫生官员表示，这种可能性已被“排除”。

中国声称，其边境地区的其他暴发始于挪威的鲑鱼和巴西的鸡翅。2月2日，台湾卫生部长兼中央流行病控制中心（CECC）负责人陈时中表示，对从10个国家（包括中国）进口的104批次冷冻肉和海鲜中的408个样品进行的冠状病毒检测均呈阴性结果。

陈说，尽管没有任何证据表明在一年多的时间内通过冷冻食品传播到大流行，但“世界上有一个国家”（中国）一再报告其冷冻食品的冠状病毒检测呈阳性。在台湾的936例确诊的COVID-19病例中，没有人相信是从冷冻食品中感染了该病毒，而台湾的前7例病例则是在2020年1月20日至22日之间来自武汉。

https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4125464