As we continue to work our way through the COVID-19 pandemic, balancing protection and practicality continues to be a challenge. The desire to return to “normal(ish)” is completely understandable. However, “normal” is a long way away. It’s more a matter of what degree of “abnormal” we’re willing to tolerate (and for how long), and what
Next Round of COVID-19 Odds and Ends
Things have been relatively quiet on the animal/COVID front for the past week or so (and that’s good). We’ll likely continue to see sporadic cases in pets that get infected from their owners. Hopefully, all of those cases will stop with the pet and there will be no further transmission to other people or animals
Canadian Veterinary Industry Visitation Guidelines
As we move forward in the COVID-19 era, a lot of things need to be done differently. We’ve written a lot about procedures in veterinary clinics to maximize distancing and protection while minimizing the impact on patient care. Many ancillary issues have also come up, including limiting or managing people other than clients going into
Updated Ontario Veterinary Practice Guidance for the COVID-19 Era
The title says it all, I guess. Here is the updated OVMA Guide to Reopening Veterinary Medicine in Ontario, Stage 2, hot of the press. It can also be accessed from the Worms & Germs COVID-19 Veterinary Resources page.
Veterinary COVID-19 Infection Control Q&A
Here’s a bit of an odd-and-ends post covering some common questions I’ve been getting about COVID-19 and infection control in veterinary clinics. As always, answers are based on little or no evidence, but on principles of infection control, and they may change as we learn more and as this pandemic continues to evolve.
Would it
COVID-19 Scent-Detection Dogs
I’ve had countless questions about the potential for scent detection dogs to be useful for COVID-19 surveillance. It’s an interesting idea, but it’s dependent on COVID-19-infected people producing some volatile compound detectable by the dogs than uninfected people do not. (The virus itself is not likely to have a detectable odour.)
A recent pre-print paper
COVID-19 Cat: Minnesota
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
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
SARS-CoV-2 in Dogs: USA
The USDA has issued announced the first confirmed case of SARS-CoV-2 infection in dog in the US. The affected dog was a German Shepherd from New York state, and unsurprisingly its owner had COVID-19. Interestingly, this dog did have signs of respiratory disease, a finding that hasn’t been reported in dogs to date. It tested
New Feline SARS-CoV-2 Experimental Infection Study
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