Is It Safe To Order Food Delivery During COVID-19 Outbreak? CDC, UAB Experts Say Yes

By Adam Pope

Feel free to order that pizza or call in for curbside pickup at your favorite local restaurant: The risk of contracting COVID-19 through food delivery or pickup – the packaging or the food itself – is low, according to leading health organizations and Jodie Dionne-Odom, M.D., assistant professor in the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Division of Infectious Diseases.

Food delivery has been recommended as a simple way to maintain social-distancing practices during the global COVID-19 outbreak, because there is little risk of virus transmission through food itself, says Ian Williams, Ph.D., chief of the Outbreak Response and Prevention branch of the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which investigates food and waterborne illnesses. The United States Food and Drug Administration and the United States Department of Agriculture concur; no organization has reported that COVID-19 can be transmitted by food or food packaging. The biggest risk of transmission, Williams says, is in exposure to individuals who are symptomatic.

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