Hong Kong to kill 2000 Hamsters after COVID outbreak

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Hong Kong authorities said on January 18, 2022 that they will kill about 2,000 small animals, including hamsters, chinchillas and rabbits, after 11 hamsters tested positive for the coronavirus at a pet store where an employee and costumer were also infected.

The city will also stop the sale of hamsters and the import of small mammals, according to officials from the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department. The pet shop employee tested positive for the delta variant on Monday, and several hamsters imported from the Netherlands at the store tested positive as well.

Customers who purchased hamsters from the store after Jan. 7, 2022 will be traced and be subject to mandatory quarantine and must hand over their hamsters to authorities to be put down, officials said. Customers who bought hamsters in Hong Kong from Dec. 22, 2021 will be subject to mandatory testing and are urged not contact others until their tests have returned negative. If their hamsters test positive, they will be subject to quarantine.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), animals do not appear to play a significant role in spreading the coronavirus. But Hong Kong authorities said they are not ruling out transmission between animals and humans. Minks are the only known animals to have caught the virus from people and spread it back, according to Dr. Scott Weese at Ontario Veterinary College. 17 million potentially infected minks were killed in Denmark back in November 2020.

Nearly 18,000 people have signed a petition calling for an end to the mass killing. Thousands have volunteers to adopt the animals.

One Third Test Positive

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The Wall Street Journal reported that a flight from Deli, India to Hong Kong was packed tight like sardines in a tin can. All passengers had to stay at a quarantine hotel upon arrival. More than a third of the passengers on flight UK6395, 52 so far — have tested positive for COVID-19. They had all tested negative before the flight.

One passenger, Mrs. Fathima said she feared her family picked up the infections on the April 3, 2021 journey, despite wearing masks almost the entire time and avoiding using the restrooms on board. Some passengers — including one in the same row — coughed repeatedly during the six-hour flight, people took masks off to eat, and some parents walked their crying children up and down the aisle, she said.

There is a debate as to weather the passengers were infected on the flight or in the quarantine hotel. Genome testing is being done to try and figure out the source of infection.  COVID spread could still have happened on flight UK6395 if a highly infectious patient had not worn a mask properly, or if germs had contaminated common facilities such as toilets when a passenger did not flush the water closet with the lid closed. Forbes reported that a new case study from New Zealand’s Ministry of Health finds that Covid-19 can spread on long-haul flights. In September, 2020 two other international studies came to the same conclusion. And last month, an Irish study linked 59 Covid-19 cases to one seven-hour flight.

According to The Sun, Poonam Nanda, the director of Nanda Travel, based in Hong Kong, added: “This one flight appears to be an astonishing outlier and we are all confounded by these numbers.” Hong Kong has now banned all flights from India starting  May 3, 2021 for 14 days.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently eased its domestic and international travel guidance for vaccinated people, stating that travelers who are fully vaccinated “can travel safely within the United States” but noted a greater risk for international travel. However, the agency is still discouraging nonessential travel due to rising numbers of Covid-19 infections. Driven by extremely contagious variants that have invaded all 50 states, the virus is currently hitting healthier 30 to 50 year-olds hard.