Hong Kong authorities enforced an animal cull of more than 2,000 hamsters after one pet store employee and several hundreds of the creatures tested positive for the coronavirus infection as the nation struggles against new outbreaks of the virus.

The pet store employee was found to have been infected by the coronavirus after a test on Monday and had the Delta variant. Officials also said that several hamsters from the store, which were recently imported from the Netherlands, also tested positive for the infection. The situation comes as the Omicron variant has caused new outbreaks throughout the city.

Massive Animal Cull

Authorities are still unsure whether or not the pet store cases are linked, and they noted that, if there  was a link, the employee may have been infected by the animals or vice versa. However, officials are not ruling out the possibility that the hamsters were the origin of the recent infection and enforced drastic actions.

Hong Kong has stopped all sales of hamsters in the city as well as halting all imports of the creatures and other small animals, such as chinchillas, after the discovery of the infection. There were already around 2,000 small animals inside the city that authorities decided to put into a humane cull to prevent further transmission of the virus, ArsTechnica reported.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that animals did not appear to have a significant role in the spread of the coronavirus infection. However, Hong Kong authorities were still considering the possibility of the infection being spread from animals to humans.

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A controller at the Center for Health Protection, Edwin Tsui, said that Hong Kong was unable to exclude the possibility that the store employee was on the receiving end of the infection. While the coronavirus pandemic is believed to have started from an animal that infected a person, the spread was much faster among humans, resulting in the massive pandemic we have today.

Spread of COVID-19 Among Animals

Dr. Scott Weese from Ontario Veterinary College said that Minks were the only known animals where the virus is known to have been transmitted from human to animal and back to human. The director of the Agriculture, Fisheries, and Conservation Department, Leung Siu-Fai, spoke at a news conference and said that owners should keep their hamsters at home and not take them out, the Associated Press reported.

Siu-Fai said that the decision to capture the thousands of small animals was due to the city's inability to quarantine and observe each creature. She also noted that the animals could have a long incubation period for the virus, which would make the process much more tedious and dangerous.

The situation is similar to one that happened in 2020 when Denmark officials culled around 17 million commercially raised Minks after the animals were found to be at risk of carrying the coronavirus infection. Later, the nation's government admitted that the animals were improperly killed and buried and they have tasked a commission to look into the case, The Washington Post reported.

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