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.
COVID-19 and Animals: Odds and Ends (again)
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
Don’t Take One of Those To Go…Raccoons Handed Out Outside a Convenience Store
Lots of things you can get at a convenience store aren’t great for your health, but I wouldn’t have thought we’d have to add rabies to the list of concerns.
Public health officials in Niagara Falls, NY, are trying to track down nine baby raccoons that were handed out by someone outside a 7-Eleven store
More Dutch Mink with SARS-CoV-2
The SARS-CoV-2 situation in the Dutch mink industry continues to evolve. Dutch authorities are now reporting outbreaks of SARS-CoV-2 on 8 mink farms (with one more suspected), as part of their broader investigation of the industry. After identifying outbreaks on multiple mink farms, the infection was declared a reportable disease national surveillance was initiated, including
More COVID-19 Odds and Ends
A few quick updates on some recent SARS-CoV-2-related stories.
North Carolina dog: Positive result not confirmed
This case, a pug in North Carolina that had an oral swab that supposedly tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 as part of a Duke University household surveillance study, was reported a few weeks ago. It was strange that there
Dutch Mink Farm COVID-19 Update
As described by ProMedMail, the Dutch Agriculture Minister has provided another update on the outbreaks of SARS-CoV-2 that have affected at least 5 mink farms in the Netherlands to date (click here for the original Dutch version of the letter).
Another suspected mink-to-human transmission of SARS-CoV-2 has been identified (with potentially infections
Suspected Mink-to-Human Transmission of SARS-CoV-2
In the midst of outbreaks of COVID-19 on at least 5 mink farms in the Netherlands, a Reuters article reports that Dutch Agricultural Minister Carola Schouten issued a letter to parliament indicating that a farm worker was infected with SARS-CoV-2 from the mink. That’s a bit surprising to me, with the surprising aspect being
Tularemia in muskrats: Long Point, Ontario
A recent report from the Canadian Wildlife Health Cooperative (CWHC) describes an outbreak of tularemia in muskrats in Long Point, Ontario. Tularemia is a potentially nasty disease caused by the bacterium Francisella tularensis. While not many people have contact with muskrats or live in Long Point, it’s still noteworthy.
The investigation was initiated following
COVID-19 and endangered animals
While COVID-19 is almost exclusively a human disease, it’s clear there can be spillover into animals. That’s probably of greatest concern in pets, because of the amount of contact we have with them and the susceptibility of some pet species (especially cats and ferrets). However, while we have less contact with other types of animals,
COVID-19 in mink: The Netherlands
We’ll put this in the “interesting but not really surprising” file.
When you have people with COVID-19 and they have contact with animals, there’s some risk of infecting the animals. The risk varies by animal species, but this virus seems to have the ability to infect a few different species beyond our own.