With the urgency and conscious efforts to quell the negative effects of the corona virus pandemic, majority of leadership worldwide, as well as various health organisations and pharmaceutical companies all over the globe are working round the clock, sharing Intel’s and trying out varying scientific procedures to ensure that the battle against the corona virus pandemic is globally defeated.
Various medications has been recently prescribed by pharmaceutical companies and vaccines developed with an intention of preventing people from getting infected while other drugs have also been recommended to serve as curative measures for those already infected.
Just when the fight against the pandemic could not get any easier, news sources reports revealed that corona virus traces has been detected in ice cream samples in China.
According to the report from local Chinese media, three samples of the locally produced ice cream were found to be contaminated with the virus in the Tianjin municipality in northeast China.
About 4,836 boxes of the ice cream, produced by the Tianjin Daqiaodao Food Company, were said to have been contaminated, of which 2,089 have now been sealed in storage.
The scary problem however, is the fact that 935 out of the 2,747 boxes of the ice cream that entered the market were said to be in Tianjin with only 65 sold so far.
Meanwhile early epidemiological investigations revealed that the company used raw materials including milk powder imported from New Zealand and whey powder from Ukraine in producing the batch of ice cream.
Speaking to Sky Sports, Stephen Griffin, a virologist based at the University of Leeds, doused the fears generated by the development, describing it as “a one-off.”
“It’s likely this has come from a person, and without knowing the details, I think this is probably a one-off,” he said
“Of course, any level of contamination is not acceptable and always a cause for concern, but the chances are that this is the result of an issue with the production plant and potentially down to hygiene at the factory.”
The virologist also explained that the temperature of where the ice cream was stored and its fat content enabled the virus to survive on the tested samples.
“We probably don’t need to panic that every bit of ice cream is suddenly going to be contaminated with corona virus,” he added.
This new development has prompted authorities to place the company’s 1,662 employees under quarantine while they were also subjected to acidic testing as directed by the Tianjin center for disease control.
Recall that the initial outbreak of the pandemic began in a place called Wuhan in China. There was also the positive perception that they, (China) had already overcome the spread of the first wave of the corona virus and that activities were already returning to normalcy, but with this recent news there will be palpable fear amongst the citizens and families of those feared to be infected by the ice cream incidence.
Gift Joseph Okpakorese
Staff Writer
