HONG KONG: HAMSTER PET STORES TO RESUME BUSINESS AFTER COVID-19 CULL

Sun 30 January 2022:

After being shut down last week and thousands of hamsters culled due to coronavirus fears, dozens of pet businesses that sold them in Hong Kong may reopen on Sunday, according to the Hong Kong authorities.

After tracing an outbreak to a worker in a shop where 11 hamsters tested sick, authorities enraged pet owners by ordering the culling of more than 2,200 hamsters.

The source was said to be imported hamsters from Holland into Chinese territory. Imports of hamsters are still prohibited.

In a statement released late Saturday, the city’s Agriculture, Fisheries, and Conservation Department said it obtained 1,134 samples from animals other than hamsters, including rabbits and chinchillas, all of which were negative.

The ministry stated five establishments were closed because they had not yet “passed the virus test,” including the “Little Boss” pet shop that sparked the outbreak.

“All the other concerned pet shops on the other hand have been thoroughly disinfected and cleaned and the environmental swabs collected from these shops have all passed the COVID-19 virus test,” it said.

The government said on Friday it would compensate pet shops trading in hamsters, offering a one-off payment of up to HK$30,000 (US$3,850).

People who had in recent weeks bought hamsters – popular apartment pets in the congested city – were ordered to surrender them for testing and what the government described as “humane dispatch”.

Thousands of people offered to adopt unwanted hamsters amid a public outcry against the government and its pandemic advisers, which authorities called irrational.

A study published in The Lancet medical journal, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, said Hong Kong researchers have found evidence that pet hamsters can spread COVID-19 and linked the animals to human infections in the city.

Residents claim the economic and psychological costs of Hong Kong’s tough stance on the virus are rapidly mounting, with measures becoming more draconian than those initially implemented in 2020.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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