Hong Kong Orders 2,000 Hamsters to Be Killed After Pet Shop Covid-19 Cases

Wellness chiefs reported the get was staying made out of prudence as there was no global proof that pets can transmit the Covid-19 to individuals.

Anyone who purchased a hamster just after Dec. 22 should really also surrender the animals, authorities explained, in accordance to community media. Shut contacts of the people contaminated encounter two weeks’ quarantine below the city’s stringent quarantine procedures.

The get confirmed the lengths Hong Kong is likely to in purchase to eradicate emerging outbreaks of the Omicron and Delta variants pursuing months of in the vicinity of-zero domestically transmitted conditions in the town. Clusters of scenarios are testing the boundaries of the city’s strict reaction to the sickness, with much more than 4,000 persons purchased into quarantine similar to regionally transmitted or imported circumstances since the stop of December.

Hong Kong’s hamsters aren’t the first animal victims of intense Covid-regulate actions. In 2020, Denmark ordered its total population of farmed mink eradicated soon after researchers identified the animals harbored new mutations of the virus that could threaten the performance of vaccines underneath growth.

Earlier in the pandemic, Hong Kong detected bacterial infections in canines and cats, but the animals had been isolated and launched when they recovered.

In May possibly 2020, researchers at the College of Hong Kong’s medical university located that Covid-19 bacterial infections in a sort of hamster termed golden hamsters resembled those discovered in individuals with moderate signs. The review also discovered that contaminated hamsters could transmit the condition to other hamsters by direct speak to or by way of the air.

The city’s hamster cull follows the an infection verified previously this 7 days of a 23-year-previous woman staff of a pet shop termed Tiny Manager in the city’s Causeway Bay district. The shop’s Facebook site showed that it sold mainly modest animals these as hamsters and rabbits. Authorities on Tuesday reported a 67-calendar year-previous female who visited the store on Jan. 8 also analyzed positive.

“Although there is no global evidence that pets can transmit Covid-19 to individuals, for the sake of prudence, we will also get some precautionary measures for any transmission routes that are unable to be dominated out, mainly because we want to limit the chance of the unfold of Covid-19,”

Sophia Chan,

Hong Kong’s secretary for food items and overall health, explained at a briefing Tuesday.

The most recent outbreaks stem from aircrew associates with the city’s flagship airline,

Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd.

, who authorities say broke isolation regulations and afterwards tested good for Covid-19. Law enforcement late Monday said they arrested the two flight attendants and charged them with violating isolation principles just after their arrival from the U.S. in late December. They encounter fines of up to $640 and up to 6 months in prison.

From Jan. 4 through Monday, the town has recorded 326 Covid bacterial infections. Of those, 68 have been transmitted within the group or connected to a situation involving a traveler into the city, whilst the relaxation were being imported.

Hong Kong has shut colleges, gyms and other public facilities throughout the metropolis and purchased all restaurants to shut at 6 p.m. because the new outbreak began in early January. It has also suspended inbound flights from eight countries, together with the U.S., the U.K., Australia and Canada, till Feb. 4.

Vacationers from extra than 150 international locations are matter to a quarantine of 21 days at a authorities facility or a hotel, as properly as many coronavirus assessments. Any one who exams good for the virus should be hospitalized irrespective of whether the circumstance is symptomatic, a coverage that has strained the city’s clinical amenities.

—Natasha Khan contributed to this article.

Write to Dan Strumpf at [email protected]