The Little Boss pet store in Hong Kong, China, was inspected by workers with Hong Kong's Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department.
A pet store employee and several imported hamsters have tested positive for the disease, and authorities in Hong Kong are planning to kill around 2,000 small animals.
The employee of the pet store tested positive for the delta coronaviruses variant. Several hamsters in the store were positive. The omicron variant has caused an outbreak of COVID-19 cases in the city.
It's not clear if the pet store cases are related or if the employee was bitten by a hamster. Hong Kong authorities can't exclude the possibility that the hamsters spread the virus to the employee. They aren't taking any chances.
Hamsters are in trouble.
All sales of hamsters and other small animals in the city were stopped by authorities. Around 2,000 small animals in Hong Kong will be culled to prevent the spread of the Pandemic virus.
People who bought pet hamsters in the city have to undergo testing. If their pets test positive, they have to leave.
If you own a hamster, you should keep them at home, said the health official. All pet owners should wash their hands after they've been in contact with animals. He told owners not to kiss their pets.
The World Health Organization said in a press briefing Tuesday that the risk of hamsters getting the virus from people is low.
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Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO's COVID-19 technical lead, said in the briefing that they are constantly looking at it. The virus can continue to affect people and animals as it circulates.
It's clear that many animal species can be affected by the disease and that they could potentially serve as a breeding ground for new strains that could potentially jump to humans at any time. In 2020 the Danes decided to kill 17 million mink after they were found to have a variant of the disease.
There are animal reservoirs.
In the US, several studies have shown widespread transmission of the disease in deer and mink farms. Dogs and cats are known to be at risk of getting COVID-19 from their owners. Some zoo animals are at risk.
Health officials are focused on the transmission of the disease among people. The rise of omicron is causing concern about animal reservoirs. The ultratransmissible variant first appeared with a large number of different types of genes, many of which had not previously been seen in humans.
Omicron's sudden appearance raised concerns that the variant originated in an animal. Humans are thought to have spread the disease to wild mice, which then transmitted it to other people. The virus was adapted to its new host and then jumped back to humans.
It's just a hypothesis, and not the leading one. A more likely explanation for omicron's origin is a person with an immune system problem. A person with animmunodeficiency may have harbored an illness for a long time. That gave the virus plenty of time to adapt and evolve into a more dangerous foe to humans. There are hypotheses for the development of new variant in general.
Concerns over pet hamsters will likely keep attention on the potential threat of the Pandemic virus in animals.
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