Last Friday, a group of monkeys attacked a laboratory technician who was walking in the state medical school in Meerut located north of Lucknow, capital of the state of Uttar Pradesh, India, and took blood samples from four patients with COVID-19 that are in treatment.
Indian health authorities said “No evidence has been found that monkeys can contract the infection,” but were concerned to learn whether the primates had come into contact with the blood and spilled it during their escape. People living near the leafy campus feared further spread of the virus if the monkeys brought the samples to residential areas.
In the following video posted by India Today, one of the monkeys can be seen above a tree trying to open one of the bags containing the blood samples.
#Breaking | Bizarre incident in Meerut: Monkeys run away with Corona test samples, locals fear the spread of infection.
— TIMES NOW (@TimesNow) May 29, 2020
Details by TIMES NOW’s Amir Haque. pic.twitter.com/9VrcIn3mqg
India is the second most populous country in the world (with 1,353 million inhabitants) and currently has more than 165,386 registered cases of covid-19 and more than 4,700 deaths.
Monkeys have become a complicated problem in some of the great cities of India. In New Dehli alone, more than twenty attacks on humans occur daily. The attacks are mostly bites but there have been several attacks on minors that end in the death of infants.
