Industry news

Boost for seafood as restaurants across China reopen

Datetime：2020-03-19

Credit: CCTV

Restaurants across China have reopened providing a boost for seafood consumption, CCTV reported on Tuesday (March 17).

 

Over 140,000 foodservice companies in Guangzhou, the provincial capital of Guangdong province, south China, reopened for business this week, according to the state media organization's broadcast. This is 70% of all restaurant businesses in the city centered in China's manufacturing hub, Pearl River Delta, CCTV reported.

 

 

“This morning I went with my girlfriend to eat breakfast at a restaurant for the first time in five weeks,” Hu Luyi, Undercurrent News’ China correspondent, who lives in Guangzhou, told this publication on Tuesday (March 17).

 

                            Credit: CCTV

Customers are required to sit at a distance from one another, while some restaurants in Shanxi province use robots to serve food. In Yunnan province, car parking lots outside restaurants were full, reported CCTV.

                                   

In a restaurant in Changsha, Hunan province, customers have their body temperature checked and ID information registered for traceability purposes, CCTV reported.

 

Hu told Undercurrent in China the public conversation has moved from the virus to how to restart the economy.  

 

“People just want to resume their businesses as fast as possible. It's what we're talking about in China," he said.

 

“We’re not talking about domestic cases of the virus -- we're talking about it very little. In the main, cases are from other countries, from airports. Maybe         there's a few dozen cases per day, in a country of 1.4 billion people. So people are not worried about domestic infection.”

 

He said the exception is Hubei province, the epicenter of the outbreak, which is still enforcing lockdown measures.

China has enforced some of the most severe quarantine and social distancing measures since the beginning of the outbreak. According to China’s National Health Commission, on March 17 there were 13 new confirmed cases of infection in China. 11 more people died from the virus, reported CNBC.

News source: UCN