The coronavirus is not transmitted via food or food packaging, the Food and Drug Administration confirmed Thursday.
In a joint press release with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the FDA said that “there is no credible evidence of food or food packaging associated with or as a likely source of viral transmission” of the coronavirus.
The FDA stated that “COVID-19 is a respiratory illness that is spread from person to person, unlike foodborne or gastrointestinal viruses, such as norovirus and hepatitis A that often make people ill through contaminated food.”
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The belief that the coronavirus can be spread via food or food packaging has lingered since the early days of the pandemic, when early research suggested that the virus could last for hours or even days on plastic and paper surfaces.
But subsequent research has found that the virus is unlikely to be spread via surfaces. The amount of virus particles that can be picked up from touching a surface is theoretically relatively small compared to the amount needed to infect a person, according to the FDA.
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The FDA also noted that “considering the more than 100 million cases of COVID-19, we have not seen epidemiological evidence of food or food packaging as the source.”
