We are looking to recruit Canadian veterinary clinic staff who have had COVID-19 themselves for a study to learn more about the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from people to their own pets (dogs, cats, ferrets). This study is being performed by Drs. Scott Weese and Dorothee Bienzle from the Ontario Veterinary College, University of Guelph.
Who
I’ve let the blog slip over the past week so it’s catch-up time. (I’ve been busier on Twitter – @weese_scott if anyone wants to follow that).
I want to get back to some COVID-19 discussion, and rather than a multi-species update, I figured I’d back up and focus on an overview of one species at
Here’s a quick update on some recent feline studies on SARS-CoV-2. Some come with the increasingly common disclaimer that they are pre-prints, meaning the studies haven’t yet undergone peer review by other scientists in the field.
Cats in Hong Kong (Barrs et al. Emerg Infect Dis 2020)
This study has undergone peer review,
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
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
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
I’ve been slow posting in the past few days, so here are a few quick recaps from the animal/COVID-19 world.
Higher quality debunking of crappy dog-SARS-CoV-2 paper
Back in April, a paper (Xia 2020) was released that suggested dogs could be the source of SARS-CoV-2. Most of us considered it crap at the
The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) has announced an outbreak of E. coli O157 infections in people linked to Carnivora brand raw pet food, and Health Canada has issued a recall of a number of Carnivora products due to potential contamination with E. coli O157. Illnesses have been reported in four individuals in
I said I’d probably stop reporting on individual animal cases if they’re just repeating what we already know. So, I hesitated on this most recent feline case, but there’s an interesting timing component that’s worth discussing.
SARS-CoV-2 was identified in a cat with respiratory disease in Minnesota. The owners were infected first, the cat
A new experimental study of SARS-CoV-2 in cats (Bosco-Lauth et al. 2020, available in pre-print on bioRxiv) re-inforces information from earlier studies and provides some important new insights. The standard disclaimer that the information is from a pre-print (non-peer-reviewed) source applies, but the science seems pretty sound.
For this study, seven adult
