Afrigather Hong Kong is determined to assassinate over 2,000 hamsters and ban importation of runt animals after a pet shop worker, a customer and no decrease than 11 hamsters examined certain for COVID-19.
“They’re excreting the virus, and the virus can infect varied animals, varied hamsters and furthermore human beings,” Thomas Sit, assistant director of Hong Kong’s Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation division, said on Tuesday.
“We don’t must cull the entire animals, however we now have got to offer protection to public health and animal health. We keep no longer have any desire — we now have got to carry out an organization decision.”
The decision used to be made after a worker traced to the Limited Boss pet shop within the Causeway Bay district of Hong Kong island used to be confirmed on Monday to have diminished in dimension the Delta variant.
Additional tests showed an an infection in a customer who had reach in touch with the worker whereas exchanging a cage and procuring for hamster meals alongside with her daughter on January 7. The client’s husband has furthermore examined certain for the coronavirus.
Upon additional testing, 11 infected hamsters were stumbled on within the shop and likely samples were stumbled on from cages at the corporate’s warehouse.
In mild of this pattern, All hamsters at the metropolis’s 34 licensed retailers will be seized for testing and then culled. Somebody who sold a hamster after December 22 has been requested to resign the animal to be examined and euthanized.
On Tuesday, Leung Siu-fai, the director of the AFCD, told newshounds all over a press briefing that two shipments of hamsters imported from the Netherlands on December 22 and January 7 were suspected to be carrying COVID-19, and will be connected to the untraceable Delta variant outbreak.
