The World Health Organization (WHO) has conceded the immense difficulties countries face in stopping the spread of COVID-19 while again affirming the virus that causes the disease can't be transmitted by food.
SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, came out of Wuhan, China, in December and has economically crippled practically every country since. During a recent meeting at WHO headquarters in Switzerland, the organization's top infectious disease experts admitted that SARS-CoV-2 is proving exceptionally difficult to stop.
"This is not an easy virus, and not an easy virus, either, to detect. It's not an easy virus to stop," said Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO's Health Emergencies Program.
He admitted it remains difficult to distinguish between COVID-19 and other syndromes unless there's adequate and immediate testing.
"You've seen that now in countries with influenza and with COVID at the same time," he noted.
As of Thursday, the world had to reckon with 21.1 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and 757,000 deaths, according to Worldometer data. The United States remains the hardest hit in both total cases and deaths, with 5.4 million and 170,000, respectively.
Because of the bitter experience fighting COVID-19, WHO is pushing hard to determine at what point the virus crossed the species barrier to make the jump from animal to human. Scientists have reached the consensus that the disease was transmitted from animals to people at a marketplace in Wuhan. They also agree SARS-CoV-2 genetically resembles other coronaviruses that originated in bats.
"It is important that we find that because as long as the animal-human breach has not been discovered, there's always a chance that that barrier can be breached again," said Dr. Ryan.
On another important issue, the WHO again denied that SARS-CoV-2 can be transmitted through food, saying there was "no evidence" that this was the case.
The WHO had to again revisit this issue on account of news reports out of China saying three cities had reported finding SARS-CoV-2 on the surface of imported frozen food over the past few days. This alleged fomite transmission resurrected fears SARS-CoV-2 remains infectious in food and might lead to new outbreaks.
WHO officials explained that Chinese health authorities had only tested a few hundred thousand samples of frozen food. It said the Chinese found "very, very few" tests coming back positive.
But even if the virus can be transmitted through food, cooking will kill it, said Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of WHO's emerging diseases and zoonosis unit.
