The UCLA Department of Epidemiology is seeking volunteers to participate in the Veterinary and Zoonotic Surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) and Other Coronaviruses Study, a study of animal healthcare and welfare workers, in order to assess their potential exposures to SARS-CoV-2 and other zoonotic pathogens, clinical symptoms, mental health, and attitudes and practices associated with the
SARS-CoV-2 in Cats and Dogs: Canada
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
Vaccine Globalism, Not Nationalism
The amount of money being spent developing a COVID-19 vaccine is astounding. (The amount being spent on ensuring people will actually get such a vaccine, not so much – but that’s a different story.)
Beyond vaccine hesitancy, one potentially major issue with vaccination is inequity. Rich countries have greater ability to produce and/or buy vaccine.
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
Updated Veterinary COVID Guidelines
As things change, both in the epidemiology of COVID-19 and our approach to containment, re-assessment of how we practice veterinary medicine and COVID-19 protection is important. The latest iteration of our guidance document has been released: COVID-19: A Guide to Reopening Veterinary Medicine in Ontario, Stage 3. As for the previous versions, this is
Foodborne COVID-19 Fear
I’ve been away and need to catch up on some posts. I was planning a nice non-COVID post, until a few seconds ago when I saw the CNN headline “Chinese officials say chicken wings imported from Brazil tested positive for COVID-19.”
My response… oh crap.
Not because I fear a wave of foodborne
Veterinary Clinic Access and COVID-19 Risks
I get a lot of emails about vet clinic access from a wide spectrum of individuals. This includes:
- Owners who are upset they aren’t allowed in the clinic with their pet
- Owners who are worried that their vet clinic isn’t doing enough to prevent transmission of COVID-19
- Vets who want to know how to increase
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
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