The FDA Says You Cannot Contract COVID-19 From Food or Food Packaging. Here’s What We Know.
When we first started having to contend with the coronavirus, there were large concerns about contracting COVID-19 from food and food packages at the grocery store.
If there is ONE bright spot in the otherwise Jumanji game that is 2020, it is that there seems to be absolutely NO correlation between foods and contracting the coronavirus.
There is no evidence that people can contract COVID-19 from food or from food packaging.
Sonny Perdue, Agriculture Secretary, and Stephen Hahn, Commissioner for the FDA
This statement also goes along with what the Mayo Clinic is saying about catching COVID-19.
There’s no evidence of anyone contracting the virus that causes COVID-19 after touching food containers and food packaging.
William F. Marshall, III M.D., the Mayo Clinic
What HAS been established is, the virus is spread through droplets from contagious people who talk, sneeze, or cough. Coronavirus is not alone in this mode of infection. Sicknesses like whooping cough, the flu, and meningitis are also spread by droplets in much the same way.
That means you should still be careful when grocery shopping.
The percentage of chance for catching COVID-19 goes up when you are in a poorly ventilated, indoor area, like a grocery store.
It’s possible that the new coronavirus might linger on fruits and vegetables that have been handled by a person with the virus. Whether this could make you sick with COVID-19 isn’t known.
William F. Marshall, III M.D., the Mayo Clinic
You should still take precautions like wearing your mask, maintaining a distance of at least 6 feet from those around you, washing your hands, cleaning shopping baskets, not touching produce you aren’t going to purchase, using hand sanitizer, and other common sense precautions.
But, if you are worried about catching the coronavirus from that pound of meat you are grilling up for hamburgers, there is no evidence of this happening.
Always throw away used packaging, and wash your hands after touching any packaging, but the odds of you catching COVID-19 from the meat, itself, is pretty nill.
If you are still concerned, you can “follow food safety guidelines and wash all fruits and vegetables thoroughly before eating them, by running them under water. Soap isn’t needed. You can scrub produce that has a rind or thick skin with a clean produce brush. Also wash your hands well with soap and water as soon as you get home from the grocery store.”
