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Since the pandemic, China has relied on mass testing, extensive quarantines and snap lockdowns to stamp out any resurgence of the coronavirus. But the highly infectious Omicron variant has posed a challenge to China's most stringent anti-Covid measures.
It said since June, "illegal trading and illegal contact" between fishermen in the Fujian province and overseas vessels had spread Covid to China, "causing great social harm."
Xiamen reported 10 Covid cases Friday, bringing the total number in the latest outbreak to 65. The port city rolled out three rounds of mass testing for its 5 million residents, starting from Wednesday.
Jin Dongyan, a professor at Hong Kong University's School of Biomedical Sciences, told CNN the policy was a "waste of resources."
"They should focus on the people rather than the fish," he said.
According to Jin, testing the catch is "completely useless" because the chances of the fish testing positive and spreading the virus to humans was "very low."
"It is 100 or 1,000 times more possible that these fishermen got infected by other fishermen. There's no evidence that the fish can transmit the virus," he said.
Chinese officials have previously blamed the country's Covid-19 outbreaks on a variety of imports, including frozen seafood, suggesting that people could have become sick after handling contaminated packaging.
CNN's Beijing bureau contributed to this report.