Hyderabad: Covid lions scare citizens to avoid meat & poultry

Hyderabad: Panic gripped among public and meat traders after tigers in the Zoo Park were tested positive with corona virus. The impact on meat sales has been seen on Tuesday as the chicken sales were down compared to Monday. People are afraid of having chicken or while traders are worried about losses in their business.

Livestock and poultry breeders are more concerned than the public and traders as they will have to face huge losses if the virus transmits to the livestock. Poultry traders in a few villages in Telangana faced huge losses last year during the pandemic as the bird flu spread.

Sharing their thoughts citizens are saying that while corona can be transmitted to lions in isolation at Zoo Park far away from the population then it can be transmitted more easily to animals and birds which came in contact with public. However, no such case has been reported in the state so far.

Experts are saying that the corona virus can only infect human beings; it does not spread among animals or birds; there is no single instance of it apart from the current lions' instance at Zoo Park. Veterinary Officials say that there is no need to panic absolutely the livestock or birds will never get infected by this virus.

Director Veterinary and Animal Husbandry V Lakshma Reddy said, "Corona virus can affect human respiration only it cannot affect cattle so there is no need to panic we are experiencing Covid for one year and no single instance of this kind came to light".

Speaking on the infected lion issue at Zoo, Lakshma Reddy said. "it's a rare example with no such case registered earlier. It has to be researched how the infection reaches the lions living in a safari far from the population."

On the other hand, poultry trader Muhammad Saleem of Nampally Market, said that the poultry business suffered from pandemic or viruses. "We suffered a lot and distributed chicken free of cost though there was no corona effect on livestock last year. After the news spread about infected lions got viral on social media people may again avoid eating chicken," he said.

Though the Veterinary department is denying the corona effect among livestock and birds, a few doctors are saying that Covid-19 is a very strange virus and nothing can be said with certainty whether it could affect the animals or not because it is changing in different variants over days.