Hamsters are only the second species known to have spread SARS-CoV-2 to humans.
The latest study points to the pet trade as a route for viral spread, says co-author Leo Poon, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong. But “to be fair to the hamsters”, people are still much more likely to be infected by each other than by pets, he says.Nevertheless, it is important to monitor the pet trade closely, says Marion Koopmans, a virologist at the Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Within days, public-health officials had swabbed more than 100 animals at the pet shop and another 500 at the warehouse supplying it. They detected SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA or antibodies against the virus in 15 of 28 Syrian hamsters , but in none of the dwarf hamsters, rabbits, guinea pigs, chinchillas or mice.
The team also noticed some diversity in the sequences, and concluded that the hamsters were probably first infected in November, before their arrival in Hong Kong, and that the virus had been spreading undetected among the animals, accumulating a few single-nucleotide mutations along the way.The pet-shop worker and visitor were probably infected on separate occasions, and Poon says there could have been more jumps.
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