Hamster owners were trickling into the Sha Tin Animal Management Center, a gloomy building on the outskirts of Hong Kong. Most alone. Some admitted to having left tearful children at home. Everyone carefully wore their mask and behind it, a face of circumstances. In hand, a bag or a box. They came to deliver their pets, obeying the instructions of the authorities of the autonomous territory. In a measure that has unleashed fury among Hong Kong citizens, the Health Department has decided to sacrifice 2,000 hamsters, chinchillas and guinea pigs after seven specimens in the same pet store tested positive for covid.
The sacrifice of small mammals has been decided as a "precautionary measure" to prevent the spread of coronavirus in the former British colony - which, like the rest of China, has adopted a "covid zero" policy - after an employee of the store and a customer fell ill with covid and before the possibility that it was the rodents that infected them, in what would be the first known case of transmission of the virus from animals to people in Hong Kong. The importation of these animals has also been temporarily prohibited.
The establishment, in the heart of Hong Kong, was closed on Tuesday, when the positive of the animals was confirmed. Late at night, health workers and officials could be seen leaving the shop, dressed from head to toe in protective suits, carrying red bags marked with a danger sign containing biological remains. The store of the establishment, which has six other branches in the city, has also been closed.
Immediately, the Hong Kong Department of Health began to insistently request the owners of hamsters and other small mammals acquired after December 22, the date on which the infected batch was put up for sale, from the Netherlands.
It is unknown whether the animals arrived as carriers of the virus or were infected in Hong Kong.
"Internationally, there is no evidence that pets transmit the coronavirus to humans, but (...) we will take precautionary measures against any transmission vector," explained Sophia Chan, the Secretary of Health, at a press conference. .
A woman takes her master's degree to the Sha Tin animal management center on Wednesday.
BERTHA WANG (AFP)
The decision to euthanize the animals has outraged pet owners and animal rights organizations. More than 25,000 people, out of a population of 7.4 million Hong Kongers, have signed a petition calling for an "unfair and brutal" measure to be withdrawn. "A pet is its owner's best friend, and thousands of people could unjustifiably lose their most beloved companions to government orders," the petition states.
An animal rights organization, Life on Palm, claims to have received calls from more than a hundred hamster owners concerned about the health of their families and considering getting rid of them.
The group, quoted by the Hong Kong newspaper
South China Morning Post
, urges the authorities not to slaughter the rodents and wonders about the need to kill so many animals when the positives have been detected in a single store.
Instead, he recommends testing them for covid and keeping them under observation in a ventilated place.
But government scientists have declared themselves against this option, indicating that the territory lacks facilities to maintain and carry out covid tests on so many specimens under adequate conditions.
Speaking to the Commercial Radio station, microbiologist Yuen Kwok-yung added the low proportion of the population vaccinated against covid to the reasons for the sacrifice. "This decision would not have been necessary if the entire Hong Kong population had been inoculated," he alleged. Although more than 70% of the residents of the enclave have received at least two doses, among those over 80 years of age that figure drops to less than 20%. "Doctors respect all lives, but when it comes to fighting the pandemic and public health, you have to make a decision about what's best for everyone," he said.
At the animal management center, a man surnamed Chan who came to deliver his hamster told Hong Kong television RTHK his support for the official decision.
"I have children at home, better not take risks."
Another citizen, surnamed Hau, indicated to the AFP agency his concern for the health of his elderly parents, with whom he shares a house, although he acknowledged that his 10-year-old son was inconsolable over the loss of his pet
Pudding
.
"I have no choice, the government has made it sound so serious," he declared.
China shields itself from covid before the Winter Olympics
The strict zero covid policy in Hong Kong mirrors that adopted by the central government in mainland China, where the emergence of small outbreaks of the omicron variant has led to redoubled shielding measures, especially as the Winter Olympics approach. which will be inaugurated in the capital in just two weeks. Travel to Beijing from areas where cases have been detected has been prohibited. Travelers arriving from "clean" areas must undergo two PCR tests: the first, within a maximum period of 48 hours before travel, and the second three days after arrival. After three confirmed cases in the city of 20 million inhabitants, schools have been ordered to suspend face-to-face classes and continue them remotely.
The contagion in Beijing from a woman who was not a contact of other cases led to the confinement of her residential complex and the office building where she worked. Without a clear source of infection, the Chinese authorities, who in the past have defended that the coronavirus can spread through imported frozen products, point out that the patient could have become ill from contact with a package that she received from Canada and that passed through United States and Hong Kong before reaching their destination.
The case of the woman, who has transmitted the virus to at least two other people, has led municipal authorities to recommend that residents disinfect packages they may receive from abroad and minimize international purchases.
An office building near the Beijing Capital Airport was placed under lockdown on Tuesday after receiving what the local government said was contaminated mail from abroad.
More than a thousand people were locked up until they were tested for coronavirus, all of them negative.