June 30, 2022 – As if cats weren’t mysterious enough already, questions have now resurfaced about animal-to-human transmission of the coronavirus after a report that a Thai vet likely contracted COVID-19 from a cat he was swabbing.
Nature reports that the case is the first evidence of cat-to-human transmission of COVID-19, although early in the pandemic cats were found to transmit COVID to other cats, and there is there have been various reports of the virus passing between animals and humans, not least among them the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 jumped from bats to humans.
According to a CDC report in Emerging infectious diseases, posted online earlier this month, “A veterinarian in Thailand was diagnosed with COVID-19 after sneezing on an infected cat belonging to an infected patient. The genetic study supported the hypothesis of a transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from the owner to the cat, then from the cat to the veterinarian.
So should people be worried about getting COVID from their cat or other pets?
Very rare instances
The chances are very low, says Jane Sykes, PhD, professor of small animal internal medicine at the University of California Davis.
A human is much more likely to give a pet COVID-19 than the other way around, she says.
Additionally, cats only shed viable virus for a short time (about 5 days), according to the CDC.
“Some coronaviruses that infect animals can spread to people and then spread between people, but that’s rare. This is what happened with SARS-CoV-2, which likely originated in bats,” the CDC states.
Sykes says it’s very difficult to prove whether a cat has infected a human because of the common time lag of people knowing they have COVID-19 and the difficulty separating the interactions of people indoors and out. the exterior of a household with the interactions of household members and animal family.
Cat-to-human transmission may have happened before, she says, but it just hasn’t been proven as such.
In any case, she says, “pets are not significant engines of SARS-CoV-2 transmission.”
In Thailand’s case, the discovery of cat-to-human transmission came about by accident, according to the Nature the item.
Last August, a father and son who tested positive for coronavirus were moved to an isolation ward at a hospital in southern Thailand. Their cat was also swabbed and tested positive.
According to the report, “While dabbed, the cat sneezed in front of a vet, who was wearing a mask and gloves but no eye protection.
Three days later, the vet developed fever, sniffles and a cough, and later tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, but none of his close contacts developed COVID-19, suggesting that she had been infected by the cat. Genetic analysis also confirmed that the vet was infected with the same variant as the cat and its owners, and that the viral genomic sequences were identical.
Recommended Precautions
Even though transmission is rare, precautions are wise, the CDC says, advising, “People with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 should avoid contact with animals.
If infection from a pet is suspected, “eye protection as part of standard personal protection is recommended for caregivers during close interactions,” the CDC states.
Earlier this year, WebMD reported that scientists had found the coronavirus in 29 types of animals, including pets, livestock and wildlife.
A research team in 2020 found a possible case of cat-to-human transmission, but it was difficult to confirm.
In most cases, humans infect animals, and animals do not infect humans. But scientists have been concerned about recent research which shows that some animals other than household companions – such as mink and deer – appear capable of transmitting the virus to humans.
According to a study published on the preprint server bioRxiv, the researchers found the “first evidence of a highly divergent lineage of SARS-CoV-2 in white-tailed deer and deer-to-human transmission.” Last fall, experts said the concern was high enough to warrant a warning to deer hunters to wear a mask and gloves when handling the animals.
Nature also reported in February this year that hamsters “probably carried the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 to Hong Kong and triggered a human outbreak of COVID-19”, according to a genomic analysis of hamster samples.
In this article, Arinjay Banerjee, PhD, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, says the risk of getting infected from a hamster is low, but it’s “something to be aware of.” .
Sykes says that while there’s no reason yet to vaccinate pets for COVID or test them for the disease, there should be more awareness of the possibility.
“I think cats can potentially transmit the infection to humans,” she says. “We know this virus is changing. New variants are continually appearing. If it becomes more evident that pets could be a source of infection for humans, then we need to think about more frequent testing or even vaccination of pets.
webmd Gt