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    The hamsters of Hong Kong offer a cautionary COVID tale

    A new study documents that infected hamsters, imported from the Netherlands, passed the virus on to humans. Previously only minks had been identified as a source of animal-to-human transmission.
    by Melody Schreiber Feb 10, 2022 4 minutes
    A hamster named Marshmallow was dropped off at the New Territories South Animal Management Centre in Hong Kong on Jan. 19 over concerns that pets were spreading the coronavirus to humans. Thousands of small animals were culled after hamsters tested positive in a pet store.

    Hamsters can infect people with the coronavirus, which then goes on to spread among the human population — that's the assertion in a new study about the events of mid-January, when Hong Kong announced that at least three cases of COVID-19 were linked to hamsters in a pet store.

    The discovery was documented in a preprint study for The Lancet uploaded on Jan. 28 but not peer-reviewed or published yet. The study adds to previous research showing transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes the disease COVID-19, from minks to humans on farms in Denmark.

    It's not that surprising that animals can be infected by people, , professor of public health at the University of Hong Kong and one of the authors of the hamster

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