Authorities enraged pet lovers with an order to kill more than 2,200 hamsters after tracing an outbreak to a store where an employee tested positive for the Delta variant on Monday 17 January.

Eleven hamsters at the store, named Little Boss, also tested positive.

At least several of them had been imported from the Netherlands, where the outbreak at the store is believed to have originated.

Dozens of pet shops that sold hamsters can now reopen after being ordered to close.

However, importing the rodents remains banned.

Thousands of hamsters were culled after people who bought one of the rodents on or after 22 December were ordered to surrender them for testing and what the government described as "humane dispatch".

The customers were also told they would be subject to mandatory testing and were urged not to go into the community until their tests had returned negative.

The city's agriculture, fisheries and conservation department said it has tested 1,134 samples from animals other than hamsters, such as rabbits and chinchillas, and none of them had COVID-19.

Five shops still closed

Five stores, including Little Boss, have remained closed because they had not yet "passed the virus test", the government said.

"All the other concerned pet shops on the other hand have been thoroughly disinfected and cleaned and the environmental swabs collected from these shops have all passed the COVID-19 virus test," officials said.

The government said on Friday it would compensate pet shops trading in hamsters, offering a one-off payment of up to HK$30,000 (US$3,850).

Researchers in Hong Kong have said they found evidence pet hamsters can spread COVID-19, linking them to human infections in the city as part of a study published in The Lancet medical journal, which has not yet been peer reviewed.

Thousands of people offered to adopt unwanted hamsters amid widespread backlash against the government and its COVID-19 advisers, which was dismissed as irrational by authorities.