Pang Xinghuo, deputy director of the Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention, announced on January 17 that the latest diagnosis had sent and received international emails, and Omicron was also detected on the emails, so it is believed that it may have been spread by international emails. Then, on January 18, Beijing officially announced the second confirmed case, a close contact of the first case.
According to Pang Xinghuo, the mail was sent from Canada on the 7th, passed through the United States and Hong Kong, and arrived in the hands of the parties in Beijing on the 11th. This explanation has been questioned even among Chinese netizens, with many online comments calling it an “international joke”.
Ian Mackay, a virologist at the University of Queensland in Australia, told the Guardian newspaper that it was an “exaggeration” and that Beijing’s efforts to urge people to clean packages and avoid receiving mail were “futile efforts”.
McKay said the vast majority of the source was not objects, but people, especially asymptomatic people, and blaming the package was a political charge, not scientific.
He said that Omicron can be airborne, and the possibility of attaching to surfaces is technically true, but can this happen again and again as the CCP advertises? McKay gave a clear answer saying “no”.
According to CBC, Dr. Anna Banerji, an associate professor of pediatrics and infectious diseases at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, agreed that Beijing’s claims “are not based on science.”
Omicron “will never survive” on an envelope shipped around the world, she said.
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