COVID-19 – Hand Over Your Hamster!

The Agriculture Fisheries and Conservation Department has homed into the pet hamster cherishing ownership in Hong Kong motivated by the finding of 19 hamsters in a pet shop all evincing COVID-19 preliminary positive results.  Accordingly, the Department has ordered all pet shops selling hamsters across Hong Kong to enter temporary closure.  The Department has encouraged all pet owners recently purchasing hamsters to hand over their pets to the Department for euthanasia!

The press has bounded into action and photographed masses of tearful hamster owners of all ages young, old and in between coming with their little cages to surrender their favourite pets for destruction.  There are many views expressed about this and the Department has been obliged to issue public statements about its concern not seeking to extend to all hamsters in Hong Kong but only those which would be most likely to be affected within the last several weeks – whatever the test of that is supposed to be!  The Department has further declared its satisfaction that there is no evidence confirming that pets can pass COVID-19 to humans but also that this measure is a reasonable preventative measure against all possible routes of transmission.  The updated result appears to be that the fuss has died down – perhaps all possible hamster cases of COVID-19 have been killed while those lucky survivors who were not surrendered to the Department are able to continue to live their little lives in owner ecstatic peace!