food safety: covid doesn't like it hot

while there have been no documented cases of food-borne transmission of the covid-19 virus, scientists are taking a hard look at whether it’s possible.can you get covid-19 if someone sneezes on your sushi? it’s a question canadian scientists will be investigating in the coming months. to date, there have been no known cases of the virus passing from food to people—but it’s certainly a possibility.“as far as we know we haven’t seen any cases of covid-19 passing from food packaging or the consumption of food,” says dr. farber, professor of food science and the director of canadian research institute for food safety at the university of guelph. but he says there are still many unknowns.what scientists do know is that virus attaches to certain proteins on cells called ace receptors. these are found in the eyes, throat and nose, and bind with the virus, allowing it to get into the body. that’s why covid-19 mostly infects people via respiratory droplets that they breathe in.but researchers are not clear the virus, if it lands on food, can survive stomach acid and bile and migrate further into the intestines. some evidence suggests it does, says farber. for example, there are ace receptors located in the intestines and liver — and one of the symptoms of covid-19 is diarrhea. as well, he says, covid-19 does show up in fecal matter, and has been linked to spread via this route.“i think there is some survivability,” he says, adding that if a person has a been exposed to a large amount of the virus, the risk that it might get through could be higher. farber says that health canada is initiating a number of studies to examine what happens to the viruses like covid-19 on their way to the colon.“they’re going to use these studies to make inferences in the lab,” he says.in march, researchers in china published a study in gastroenterology in which they found that that more than 50 per cent of people infected with sars-cov-2 had the virus in their stool; with certain individuals testing positive for the virus in stool even after respiratory samples tested negative. “this finding indicates that “viral gastrointestinal infection and the potential fecal–oral transmission can last even after viral clearance in [the] respiratory tract,” they wrote.however, since march, there have been no known reports of this happening. “although covid-19 genetic material (rna) has been isolated from stool samples of infected patients,10 there are no reports or any evidence of fecal-oral transmission,” says the world health organization (who).farber also speculates that if the virus is protected — which might occur if someone eats a high-fat meal — it may survive exposure to stomach acid and pass through to the intestine.he emphasizes that there are many unknowns at this time and that “there is a lot more that we need to investigate,” saying that studies have been done on a number of coronaviruses like covid-19 and they do not point to transmission via food. “when you look at all of the coronaviruses, we haven’t seen a food-based outbreak,” he says. unlike foodborne viruses such as norovirus, and hepatitis a, which have a protective protein coat that allows them to survive on food, covid-19 does not.“there is likely an extremely low risk” of contracting the virus in this way, says farber.however, it is possible that the virus spreads via food packaging, so take-out containers should be disposed of, and people should wash their hands after handling them. “recent research evaluated the survival of the covid-19 virus on different surfaces and reported that the virus can remain viable for up to 72 hours on plastic and stainless steel, up to four hours on copper, and up to 24 hours on cardboard,” according to the who.as for those who still don’t want to take any chances, heat inactivates the covid-19 virus. it is killed at temperatures of 132.8 to 149 degrees fahrenheit after 15 minutes.