Reports that cats can catch this
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Cat owners may wish to be more cautious about contact with their pets, as a study from China has revealed Covid-19 can be transmitted between cats.
The team, at Harbin Veterinary Research Institute in China, found that cats are highly susceptible to Covid-19 and appear to be able to transmit the virus through respiratory droplets to other cats. Dogs, chickens, pigs and ducks were found to be unlikely to catch the infection, however.
The findings followed
recent reports of a pet cat in Belgium being infected with Covid-19. About a week after the cat’s owner started showing symptoms, the cat also developed breathing difficulties, diarrhoea and vomiting, and subsequent tests by vets at the University of Liège showed the animal was infected with coronavirus.
The lab experiments from the Chinese team involved a small number of animals that were given a high dose of the virus and there is no direct evidence that cats would also be able to infect people. However, the team behind the work said their findings provided important insights into the animal reservoirs of Covid-19 and how animal management might have a role in the control of the pandemic.
“Surveillance for Sars-CoV-2 in cats should be considered as an adjunct to elimination of of Covid-19 in humans,” the paper concluded.
The work, which is not yet peer-reviewed, was uploaded to the preprint website bioRxiv on Wednesday.
Cats can infect each other with coronavirus, Chinese study finds
also
A domestic cat in Belgium has been infected with COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus that's spreading across the globe, the government's FPS Public Health, Food Chain Safety and Environment announced March 27, according to news reports.
This is the first human-to-cat transmission of the
novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). About a week after its owner got sick with COVID-19, after returning from a trip to
Northern Italy, the cat developed
coronavirus symptoms: diarrhea, vomiting and respiratory issues, Steven Van Gucht, virologist and federal spokesperson for the coronavirus epidemic in Belgium, told Live Science.
The owner sent samples of vomit and feces to Dr. Daniel Desmecht's lab at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of Liège. Genetic tests showed high levels of SARS-CoV-2 in those samples, he said. "The cat recovered after 9 days," Van Gucht said.
Cat infected with COVID-19 from owner in Belgium | Live Science