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.

台灣新聞採訪了一位澳大利亞遺傳學家，他以章道玉的名義發表科學論文，以表彰他對冷凍食品起源理論的理解。張說，在武漢之前的世界任何地方都沒有SARS-CoV-2循環的證據。

張說，如果沒有食物可以被病毒感染的地方，冷凍食物就不可能成為食物的來源。如果病毒來自冷凍食品，那麼運送它的地方應該首先遭受爆發。

張說，聲稱在冷凍食品中檢測到該病毒僅涉及陽性聚合酶鏈反應（PCR）測試，沒有發現病毒分離的跡象。

這表明病毒顆粒已經失活並且沒有傳染性。張說：“它們根本不能產生人類感染，因為它們不是活性病毒。”

關於最早在2019年3月在巴塞羅那等城市的污水中發現痕量COVID-19的報道，張說，這是令人懷疑的，因為這類報道引用的Ct40評級是非常不穩定的結果，通常與假陽性相關。科學家懷疑在那些研究中可能存在樣品的交叉污染或不當存儲。

關於巴塞羅那的研究，《新年時報》援引密歇根州立大學的環境工程師Iren Xagoraraki博士的話說：“我不相信結果。” 這位工程師指出，這些研究測試了該病毒基因的不同位，並且並非所有基因都已出現。

去年八月，一份報告浮出水面，擔心新西蘭冷藏庫的一名工人被冷凍食品感染。但是，經過調查，新西蘭衛生官員表示，這種可能性已被“排除”。

中國聲稱，其邊境地區的其他暴發始於挪威的鮭魚和巴西的雞翅。2月2日，台灣衛生部長兼中央流行病控制中心（CECC）負責人陳時中表示，對從10個國家（包括中國）進口的104批次冷凍肉和海鮮中的408個樣品進行的冠狀病毒檢測均呈陰性結果。

陳說，儘管沒有任何證據表明在一年多的時間內通過冷凍食品傳播到大流行，但“世界上有一個國家”（中國）一再報告其冷凍食品的冠狀病毒檢測呈陽性。在台灣的936例確診的COVID-19病例中，沒有人相信是從冷凍食品中感染了該病毒，而台灣的前7例病例則是在2020年1月20日至22日之間來自武漢。

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