Hamster in Causeway Bay pet shop tests positive for Covid

Sources said that a pet hamster at a Causeway Bay shop was found to be carrying the coronavirus  after a staffer there was confirmed with the Delta variant of Covid-19 on Tuesday. 

The pet shop worker is a 23-year-old woman who works at Little Boss, a pet shop selling animals including rabbits and chinchillas on Jardine's Bazaar. She carried the L452R mutant strain, an indicator that she is a Delta case instead of Omicron as in recent cases.   

It was understood that health authorities' investigation revealed that a pet hamster inside the pet shop also tested positive for the coronavirus.  

Speaking at a weekly press briefing this morning, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said the pet shop worker's Delta case is concerning, possibly causing another Covid variant to be transmitted in the city.  

Lam said health authorities have been following up closely on the case, especially since the pet shop chain has more than 10 branches around the city.  

According to Centre for Health Protection data, the last local Delta case was reported on October 8, when a cargo handler working at the airport was confirmed to be infected.  

Dr. Gilman Siu Kit-hang, the PolyU academic who led the genome analysis, noted that on June 2 last year, health authorities reported the city's first Alpha case, with the case's source of infection remaining untraceable.  

The patient was reported to have purchased a chinchilla from Little Boss' Mong Kok pet shop before her diagnosis.  

At that time, a pet-to-human transmission was viewed as a possibility as the store mainly imported animals from Europe, where Alpha was then dominant.  

However, Siu said the possibility of a pet-to-human transmission is low, and Hong Kong could again record another Covid case with an untraceable source.