An abstract in the upcoming ECCVID Conference (ESCMID conference on coronavirus disease) has some of our very preliminary Canadian dog/cat surveillance data (Beinzle, Marom and Weese, SARS-CoV-2 infection in pets). A press release went out about it from the conference that’s been picked up by various news agencies, resulting in some articles about the
Plague, Cats and Travel Histories
A couple of months BC (before COVID-19), I was planning a live simulation exercise for our hospital. The goal was to see how well we could identify and handle a nasty, reportable zoonotic disease, and to look at our personal protective equipment training and needs (COVID-19 helped with that last one, at least).
Here’s the
Fostering Chicks and Ducklings: It’s All Fun and Games Until…
We all know that backyard chickens are becoming increasingly popular – despite some of their associated infectious disease hazards, which we’ve discussed many times before. The latest “pandemic pastime” takes the trend to a whole new level, with scores of people fostering chicks or ducklings as a family activity, aka something
COVID-19 and Pet Visitation Programs
As things continue to gradually open up (more gradually in some areas than others), myriad questions of “can we do…” or “how do we do…” come up. One that I’m getting increasingly is about pet visitation or pet therapy programs. These programs can be very valuable to patients in hospitals and residents in
Rat Bite Fever in the US
Rat bite fever (RBF) is an uncommon disease in people, but one that I nonetheless spend a lot of time talking about with owners, veterinarians, and physicians (and sometimes lawyers). It’s a bacterial infection spread by (you guessed it) rats. The causative agent of RBF is an obscure bacterium called Streptobacillus moniliformis, which lives
Leishmaniasis in a Dog from California
Around here, infection in dogs caused by Leishmania infantum typically comes up in the context of imported dogs, particularly those from countries around the Mediterranean (e.g. Greece, Israel, Spain). This parasite is usually transmitted between a variety of mammalian species, including dogs and humans, by certain species of sandflies. We’re quite lucky here in Ontario
An Unusual Case of Echinococcus multilocularis in Manitoba
Last spring, we posted about a report of alveolar echinococcosis (AE) in a child in Quebec from 2018. This very serious parasitic infection is caused by the intermediate stage of the fox tapeworm, Echinococcus multilocularis (EM), which despite its common name is often also found in coyotes (including right here in southern Ontario
More on SARS-CoV-2 Testing in Animals
As reports of animals testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 continue to trickle in (as expected), it’s clear that some domestic animal species are susceptible (at least to some degree) to this virus. A recent article in National Geographic about “Buddy,” the first dog in the US to test positive for SARS-CoV-2 back in May, has flooded
More on COVID-19 Detection Dogs
A colleague asked me about scent detection dogs the other day. My response was that I hadn’t heard much after all the initial buzz, which might suggest things weren’t going well. However, as opposed to the horrible pre-print about COVID-19-sniffing dogs I wrote about previously, a paper in BMC Infectious Diseases (Jendry et
A Plague of Men, and Dogs, and Marmots
Taking a break from the latest pandemic microbe, there have been a couple of recent items about another very old pandemic bug that’s never really completely gone away – Yersina pestis, known commonly as plague, and the cause of the Black Death of the mid 1300s, aka the deadliest pandemic recorded in human history.