Zhuhai’s Gongbei Customs announced in a statement yesterday that its officers seized 1,353 tubes of pregnant women’s blood samples from a Hong Kong-bound vehicle at the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge (HZMB) Zhuhai Port (customs and immigration checkpoint) on September 22.
According to the statement, at around 7:00 p.m. on that day, customs officers at the HZMB intercepted a suspicious Hong Kong-mainland China dual-plate vehicle in the Zhuhai port’s outbound passenger vehicle channel.
During an inspection, officers found several tightly sealed cardboard boxes in the vehicle’s boot. Further checks uncovered 11 packages containing individually numbered blood sample tubes labelled with personal identification information in sealed plastic bags. A total of 1,353 tubes were seized from the vehicle.
The statement noted that the samples were being taken out of the Chinese mainland in violation of relevant requirements.
Customs urged the public to comply with relevant regulations when transporting biological samples across the border.
Under the Chinese mainland’s Frontier Health and Quarantine Law, goods and items involving public health risks, including blood, human tissues, pathogenic microorganisms, and biological products, must undergo health quarantine approval by customs before entering or leaving the Chinese mainland, unless they are regulated as medicines, veterinary drugs, or medical devices. They may only be transported across the border after passing the required quarantine inspection.
The statement did not explain the purpose of attempting to smuggle pregnant women’s blood samples from the Chinese mainland to Hong Kong.
This undated handout photo provided by Zhuhai’s Gongbei Customs yesterday shows some of the 1,353 tubes of pregnant women’s blood samples intercepted at the HZMB on September 22.
