Coronavirus and Promotional Products
What we know so far about the coronavirus and promotional products
Rick Cundiff
About Coronavirus
As you know, many of the products we offer at TJM Promos are manufactured in China, where the current coronavirus outbreak originated. Some customers have inquired about the possible risks of products sent to the U.S. from China.
Please rest assured we are monitoring this situation closely, and will update this information as new data becomes available. Our production and shipping processes will be modified in any way federal health authorities deem necessary.
While we take no position on the potential risk, we offer the following statement from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control press briefing held on January 27, 2020. This is taken verbatim from the official transcript of that briefing. (Added emphasis by TJM Promos.)
Dr. Nancy Messionnier, director of CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases:
There was a question about the risk of novel coronavirus from packages of products shipped from China. So, there’s still a lot unknown about the newly emerged 2019 coronavirus and how it spread. But we know a lot about MERS and SARS, the other two coronavirus that are known to be infectious in people. The Novel coronavirus is genetically related more to SARS than MERS, which also have their origins in bats. We don’t know for sure if this virus will behave in the same way as far as MERS; we use information from those coronaviruses to guide us.
In general, because of the poor survivability of these coronaviruses on surfaces — that’s in the range of hours — there’s likely a very, very, very low, if any, risk of spread from products or packaging that is shipped over a period of days or weeks in ambient temperatures. So, at this time we can’t fully evaluate the risks from different products that are shipped from China under different conditions, but coronaviruses have generally spread most often by respiratory droplets and there’s no evidence that supports transmission of this coronavirus is associated with imported goods and no cases in the U.S., associated with imported goods.
For more information: https://www.cdc.gov/
Rick Cundiff
Content Director, Blogger
Rick Cundiff spent 15 years as a newspaper journalist before joining TJM Promos. He has been researching and writing about promotional products for more than 10 years. He believes in the Oxford comma, eradicating the word "utilize," and Santa Claus.