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
Headline: “Are Dogs Spreading SARS-CoV-2? Study Finds Living With a Dog Increases Risk of Contracting COVID-19”
NO, it did NOT!
Even though the paper said that, it’s not what they actually found. Unfortunately, a lot of people are reading that headline, or worse, they’re reading “…yada yada… dogs spreading SARS-CoV-2… yada
In our ongoing seroprevalence (antibody) testing, we’ve seen that human-to-pet transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is probably not uncommon. However, we hadn’t yet found a pet that was positive for the virus on swabs in Canada . (Antibody testing tells us if the subject was previously infected, whereas testing swabs by PCR tells us if the
Round two of my COVID-19 in animals summaries: Dogs
Are dogs susceptible to the SARS-CoV-2 virus?
Yes, but not very… maybe. It depends what you mean by “susceptible.”
Nice and clear, eh?
There’s a difference between being infected and getting sick. Dogs can be infected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus (which is the virus that causes
In human medicine, a needlestick is a big deal. That’s not surprising because of concerns about transmission of bloodborne pathogens like hepatitis B and HIV.
In contrast, in veterinary medicine needlesticks are (unfortunately) largely considered “regular” events that aren’t really a big deal. Most of the time perhaps they’re not. They hurt, but serious consequences
Rabies is a disease that’s met with an interesting mix of inherent fear and dismissiveness in most developed countries, where canine rabies has been eradicated. It’s also a disease that’s often poorly understood in areas where it causes large numbers of deaths. As an almost completely preventable disease (with proper post-exposure treatment), and one for
I’ve written before about COVID-19 scent-detection dogs. I get lots of questions about them, and there are now several groups working in this area. There’s been a mix of information to date, ranging from encouraging to some pretty bad preliminary studies released on pre-print websites and other places. A dog’s nose is a wonderful
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 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
