Covid-19 virus may survive for one month on frozen meat: Study

Had you contracted Covid-19? Perhaps you should clean out your freezer. According to a recent study, SARS-CoV-2 virus cousins can live for up to 30 days on frozen fish and pork.Research on frozen chicken, beef, pigs, and salmon was done in response to Covid-19 outbreaks in Asia where packaged meat was suspected as being the virus' source. The research results were released on June 11 in the American Society for Microbiology journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

The researchers stored the meat and fish products at both refrigeration (4 degrees Celsius) and freezer temperatures (minus 20 degrees C).

According to research lead author Emily S. Bailey, an assistant professor at Campbell University in the US, "you might not preserve meat in the fridge for 30 days, but you might store it in the freezer for that long."

"We even found that the viruses could be cultured after (being frozen for) that length of time," Bailey said in a statement.

The researchers decided to conduct the study after finding that COVID-19 outbreaks were happening in Southeast Asia prior to community transmission.

According to Bailey, the study is crucial because SARS-CoV-2 can multiply not only in the respiratory tract but also in the stomach. One RNA virus with a lipid envelop, two animal coronaviruses, murine hepatitis virus, and transmissible gastroenteritis virus were all used as surrogates in the study.All three viruses have been utilised in the past as stand-ins for SARS-CoV-2, with refrigeration temperatures often showing higher reductions in their numbers than freezing temperatures. The number of people decreased in different ways depending on the food used.

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