(Yicai Global) April 6 -- A string of recent Covid-19 cases in China have been linked to imports of clothing from South Korea, which is battling a severe new wave. Health authorities across China are reminding the public of the dangers posed by buying South Korean garments whose cross-border delivery could bring in the virus.

The centers for disease control and prevention in Dalian and Tieling in northeastern Liaoning province, Changsha and Yongzhou in central Hunan province and Zibo in eastern Shandong province have all issued warnings.

The severe outbreak in South Korea has been transmitted to China through tainted parcels, the Dalian Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention in northeastern Liaoning province said on its WeChat account yesterday.

On April 1, a shop assistant at a store in Dalian that sells clothing imported from South Korea tested positive for Covid-19 and the coronavirus was detected on the clothes and their packaging.

Another person in Changshu, eastern Jiangsu province tested positive on April 2. Four items of the person’s clothing, which she had bought online from South Korea, had traces of the virus.

A cluster in Beijing’s Shunyi and Chaoyang districts was detected on April 4 among workers at a shop that sold South Korean clothing and those they lived with.

South Korea added 280,000 new cases yesterday, up from 260,000 infections the day before, and bringing the total case load to 14.55 million, the country’s Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters said today.

Editor: Kim Taylor