Hong Kong to resume hamster imports a year after mass cull
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HONG KONG will resume hamster imports later this month, officials said on Thursday (Jan 5), nearly a year after some 2,000 pet rodents were culled at the height of the city’s coronavirus outbreak.
The Chinese financial hub halted the commercial import of the small mammals last January after a pet store worker and nearly a dozen hamsters tested positive for the Delta variant of the disease.
As part of the city’s strict zero-Covid policy, authorities also ordered hamster owners to surrender their pets for culling, sparking an outcry from animal activists and many residents.
Starting this month, hamsters can once again be imported for sale in Hong Kong, but only if they test negative for the coronavirus, said the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department.
The city’s campaign against hamsters took place in the early days of an Omicron outbreak that killed around 9,000 people, and signalled the collapse of its Covid defences.
That outbreak left Hong Kong with one of the highest per-capita fatality rates in the world last year, fuelled mostly by elderly people who had refused to get vaccinated.
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The government defended its hardline measures and cited scientific research that showed Syrian hamsters could get infected with Covid-19 and pass it on to humans.
Critics saw the cull as an illustration of the kind of strict rules that hammered the city’s economy, sparked an exodus of residents and left it internationally isolated for more than two years.
The import ban, which initially applied to all small mammals, was narrowed to only hamsters in May.
The city began relaxing its pandemic curbs in September, with mainland China following suit by the end of the year. However, Hong Kong has retained some control measures, such as compulsory mask-wearing indoors and outdoors. AFP
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