A genomic study suspects pet hamsters as the carrier of the COVID-19 delta variant in Hong Kong. The analysis was extracted from viral samples collected from a group of rodents.
The latest research may have confirmed the possible origin of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak in the country, which is a pet shop in initial reports.
COVID-19 Transmission in Hong Kong Caused by Hamsters
A two-year-old hamster named "Ring" owned by Cheung, a member of an online hamster community who has volunteered to foster abandoned small animals in light of government instructions for pet owners to give up recently purchased hamsters, chinchillas, rabbits, and guinea pigs for culling after hamsters in a pet store tested positive for Covid-19, looks on from a cage in Hong Kong on January 19, 2022.
The outbreak caused an initial coronavirus infection of approximately 50 individuals and reduced 2,000 hamsters throughout the region.
Hamsters are known to be vulnerable to coronavirus. Because of their susceptibility, the animals are commonly utilized in research related to SARS-CoV-2.
However, the new study was the first to discover that hamsters could be infected by COVID-19 even if not under a controlled environment. In addition, the study implies that tiny pets could also transmit the coronavirus to either hamsters or humans.
Hamsters are the second confirmed animals to be infected by SARS-CoV-2. The first case of detection in animals was recorded in minks. In the last quarter of 2021, Denmark and the Netherlands were affected by outbreaks related to farmed minks.
The University of Hong Kong School of Public Health expert and co-author of the study Leo Poon said in a Scientific American report that their new paper on COVID-19 animal transmission shows pet trade as the largest factor in increasing the viral spread.
Poon explained that, alongside the hamsters, people are possible transmitters of the infection other than the pets.
Erasmus University Medical Center virology expert Marion Koopmans said that keeping tabs on the ongoing pet trade, as SARS-CoV-2 could once again be circulated through animals. Moreover, the virus could evolve unexpectedly and be brought back to humans.
Hong Kong is among the countries that have strictly followed public health protocols during the surge of the pandemic. With the health guidelines implemented across the region, Poon finds it bizarre for the 23-year-old pet shop employee to catch the delta variant last January 15. In addition, the last confirmation of the same variant in the area was in October 2021.
After the report, the county's public health officials conducted a large swab testing of over 100 animals that currently resides in the pet shop. To ensure the data, the supplier's warehouse that contains 500 animals was also swabbed.
Syrian Hamsters Carrier of SARS-CoV-2
The statistics show that SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA, or the antibodies working against the coronavirus, was detected in 15 out of 28 Mesocricetus auratus or Syrian hamsters.
Other rodents, including dwarf hamsters, Guinea pigs, mice, rabbits, and chinchillas from the same pet shop group, showed no signs of the antibodies.
The authors sequenced the specimens extracted from the first three infected humans and 12 hamsters from the pet shop, including the worker and a visitor. A variant of the delta, which was not previously confirmed to exist in Hong Kong, was observed in all samples.
In terms of timeline, the authors said that the hamsters were probably infected first back in November 2021, just before they were imported to Hong Kong. Since then, the coronavirus was already jumping between the tiny pets while accumulating single-nucleotide mutations.
The pet shop employee and the visitor are theorized to have been infected in separate schedules.
The warehouse of the shop is located in the Netherlands, where the sequences matched the gathered global database of other sequences extracted from the population in Eastern Europe. The study was published in The Lancet, titled "Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 (Variant Delta) from Pet Hamsters to Humans and Onward Human Propagation of the Adapted Strain: A Case Study."
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