Hong Kong health officials enter a pet shop to cull pets and disinfect the store, in Causeway Bay, on Jan. 18, 2022.
Posted on 01/18/2022 5:21:39 PM PST by lightman
Hong Kong officials are killing hamsters by the thousands after declaring the rodents responsible for spreading COVID-19. Meanwhile, in China’s mainland, the blame has been put on international mail packaging.
As one of the world’s last major holdouts of a zero-tolerance approach to the virus, China is fanning unusual theories about the source of emerging COVID-19 clusters despite doubts from overseas experts over the likelihood of such claims.
On Jan. 18, Hong Kong ordered 2,000 hamsters, chinchillas, rabbits, and other small animals to be “humanely” put down after a health check on the rodents found 11 to carry the Delta variant of COVID-19. All of them are hamsters imported from the Netherlands, from a local pet shop where a 23-year-old worker had tested positive to COVID-19.
While the officials acknowledged there’s no clear evidence hamsters could transmit the virus to humans, they are telling pet owners who bought hamsters from any store in the city beginning Dec. 22 to hand over their animals for culling. Those who visited the pet store after Jan. 7 are subject to quarantine. All 34 pet stores in the city that sell hamsters are now shuttered, and imports of all small mammals have come to a halt. covid health hong kong
Hong Kong’s pet killing follows heightened virus containment measures in Beijing, where authorities suggested that mail from Canada might have been the culprit for the city’s first Omicron case.
The city’s health officials noted how the first Omicron patient, a 26-year-old woman, who has not traveled outside Beijing recently, handled a parcel sent from Canada via the United States and Hong Kong, before developing a sore throat two days later. They have detected the Omicron variant on both the outside of the package and in its contents, as well as on other mail samples delivered from the same origin, the officials said.
Canada’s health minister Jean-Yves Duclos called Beijing’s assertion “an extraordinary view.”
“This is something not only new but intriguing and certainly not in accordance with what we have done both internationally and domestically given what we know about the transmissibility of Omicron,” he told reporters at a Jan. 17 press conference.
Health experts have assessed the risks of virus transmitting through contaminated surfaces to be extremely low. The World Health Organization (WHO) said that coronavirus in general “need a live animal or human host to multiply and survive and cannot multiply on the surface of food packages.”
Touting the theory that the virus might have come from somewhere other than China is hardly new for the Chinese authorities. In October 2020, Beijing said an outbreak in the port city of Qingdao originated from a shipment of imported cod. In a June outbreak linked to a Beijing wholesale market, officials pointed to frozen salmon from Norway as the cause, citing a sample on a cutting board used for processing the fish that tested positive for COVID-19.
Last July, amid tensions between India and China, Beijing withheld over 1,000 containers of Indian shrimp on the grounds that the packaging allegedly contained virus residues.
In a bid to deflect growing scrutiny on Beijing’s coverup of the pandemic origins, authorities and state media have consistently put forward claims, without credible evidence, that the virus originated outside of the country. Following a WHO-China joint virus probe in China’s Wuhan last year, authorities have also repeatedly called for origin tracing efforts to begin outside of China.
The regime’s pandemic-control actions, though, have also come at a particularly sensitive time for Beijing.
Less than three weeks before the country’s capital opens the Winter Olympic Games, Beijing and cities across China have struggled to stamp out waves of COVID-19 infections.
Hundreds of Omicron infections have surfaced in multiple parts of China even as Delta cases continue to spike. After the Omicron variant extended its reach to Beijing on Saturday, Olympic organizers called off ticket sales to the general public, saying the entry will be reserved for a targeted group of spectators only. E
Hong Kong health officials enter a pet shop to cull pets and disinfect the store, in Causeway Bay, on Jan. 18, 2022.
‘Meets back on the menu boys’
Pangolin turtle hybrids?
The “Zero Tolerance” approach to Covid 19.(!?!)
How do you say “soup’s on” in Chinese?
Virus residues are probably everywhere. It doesn’t mean it’s responsible for causing an illness.
Sounds like they are more concerned about Hantavirus than Covid.
Good grief.
I was just catching up on the volcano news from Tonga, and the NYTs headline was not about the lives lost or the damage, but about how “...worries grow about covid exposure “
Ta shu bolla fuun.
China expected people to believe it is testing every piece of fish on every cutting board? How else did they find covid on such a piece of fish supposedly left out on a cutting board for them to stumble across. Their propagandists sure are lazy.
Meanwhile, in China’s mainland, the blame has been put on international mail packaging.
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CCP blaming the world for Covid.
Wow.
Thanks!
So what’s going on here?
The greatest fear the CCP has is of their own people. Hysteria and paranoia are their best tools for keepng the Chinese people in line.
There is a lot of rumbling all over China about the incompetence of the government, to a point that their “mandate of heaven” is becoming threatened.
There will be a continuing series of “boogiemen” from now on to deflect blame.
Sure, kill the pets, while huge, open-air live animal markets go on.
Whipping up fear so that the disappointed would-be Olympic fan travellers will say “I didn’t want to go to that crazy place anyway.”
I am surprised there aren’t any snowflakes on here crying because animal are people too.
Point of information: Many sadistic serial killers begin their criminal path by torturing and killing animals.
Good call...I was just recalling the story from a few weeks ago about some hemorraghic disease breakout in China
Point of information: Many sadistic serial killers begin their criminal path by torturing and killing animals.
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THERE YOU ARE!!! I was just early. Again, animals are people too.
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