SARS-CoV-2 surrogates might thrive on refrigerated or frozen meat for a month

SARS-CoV-2 surrogates can persist for up to 30 days on meat items stored in the freezer or refrigerator. These results were released in the American Society for Microbiology journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

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According to first author Emily S. Bailey, PhD, the study was done utilizing chicken, beef, pork, and salmon as well as surrogate viruses with spikes resembling those on SARS-CoV-2. The researchers kept the products in both the freezer (−20 ℃, or −4 ℉) and refrigeration (4 ℃, or 39.2 ℉) settings.

Although you might not store meat in the fridge for 30 days, 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.”

Emily S. Bailey PhD, Study First Author and Assistant Professor, Department of Public Health, College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, Campbell University

After finding that COVID-19 outbreaks were happening in Southeast Asia without preceding community transmission, the researchers decided to conduct this study.

Reports from the study “suggested that packaged meat products, produced in areas where SARS-CoV-2 was circulating, could have been the source of the virus. Our goal was to investigate whether or not similar viruses could survive in this environment,” added Bailey.

According to Bailey, the study is crucial because SARS-CoV-2 may multiply not only in the respiratory tract but also in the stomach.

In the study, the researchers substituted two animal coronaviruses, murine hepatitis virus, transmissible gastroenteritis virus, and one RNA virus with a lipid envelope.

All three viruses have been utilized in the past as stand-ins for SARS-CoV-2, with refrigeration temperatures often showing higher decreases in their numbers than freezing temperatures. The number of people decreased in different ways depending on the food utilized.

Researchers added, “Continued efforts are needed to prevent contamination of foods and food processing surfaces, worker hands and food processing utensils such as knives, the lack of, or inadequate disinfection of these foods prior to packaging needs to be addressed.”