Mask your hamsters

Pet hamsters probably carried the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 into Hong Kong and sparked a human COVID-19 outbreak, according to a genomic analysis of viral samples from the rodents. The research confirms earlier fears that a pet shop was the source of the outbreak, which had, by early February, infected about 50 people and led to the culling of some 2,000 hamsters across the city.

Hamsters are highly susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 and so are a popular model for studying the virus. But the Hong Kong study — posted online as a preprint and yet to be peer reviewed — is the first to show that hamsters can become infected outside the laboratory, and that they can pass the virus on, both to other hamsters and to humans (H.-L. Yen et al. Preprint at Social Science Research Network https://doi.org/hh9r; 2022). Hamsters are only the second animal known to be able to infect people, after mink. In late 2020, small outbreaks of COVID-19 in people in Denmark and the Netherlands were linked to farmed mink, sparking panic and mass culls.

The latest study points to the pet trade as a route for viral spread, says co-author Leo Poon, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong. But “to be fair to the hamsters”, people are still much more likely to be infected by each other than by pets, he says. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4017393