COVID-19 in Animals…A Few Updates

Note from me- I hope you find Scott's updates informative, I have found that I know much more about Covid 19 in animals than most folks, due to his updates.  I also find that he seems to have the more complete story than a simple news headline gives us.

By Scott Weese on May 14, 2020

Nothing too remarkable to report, but here are a few recent developments.

Dogs

Details about the first two positive dogs in Hong Kong have been published in Nature. It’s pretty much what we’ve previously heard but the short version is…

Two dogs were identified as positive, after being in contact with infected owners.

The first dog was a 17 yr old Pomeranian.

SARS-CoV-2 was isolated from nasal and oral swabs shortly after it arrived in quarantine, and it had positive nasal swab results multiple times over ~12 days. It also seroconverted (produced antibodies against the virus).

 The repeated isolation of the virus and seroconversion are convincing evidence that the dog was infected. However, it did not have any apparent signs of COVID-19. It died shortly after its quarantine ended but that was attributed to its old age and other issues, not the virus. 

The 2nd dog was a 2.5 yr old German shepherd, one of two dogs in the household of an infected person.

The virus was detected from sets of oral and nasal swabs taken at arrival and also taken the next day, but was negative shortly thereafter. Rectal swabs were also collected at the 2nd sampling time and were positive. This dog also seroconverted and remained healthy.

Unsurprisingly, when they looked at the genetic sequence of viruses from the dogs and their owners, viral sequences from the dogs were identical to those from their owners (and sequences from the two households were different). This is what was expected, but supports the assumption that the dogs were infected by their owners.

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Cats

Another couple of infected cats have been identified, one from Germany and one from France.

The German cat’s owner was in a retirement home with an ongoing outbreak, and had died of COVID-19. The cat was infected, while two other cats at the facility were negative. The cat was healthy, as seems to be fairly common with infected cats.

The other cat was the 2nd reported positive cat from France. This cat had respiratory disease that was non-responsive to antibiotics and anti-inflammatories, and it’s quite possible those signs were the result of COVID-19.

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Mink

There are now four mink farms in the Netherlands with outbreaks.

There’s still limited public information about the number of infected mink or information about transmission patterns on these farms.

With thousands of animals, there is certainly concern about the potential for widespread transmission, as well as ancillary issues such as what to do with reams of potentially contaminated manure. 

There’s not much mention of disease, but it’s apparent that at least some have developed respiratory disease, including fatal infections, with pregnant mink seemingly predisposed to illness.

[url]https://nltimes.nl/2020/05/15/dutch-find-coronavirus-antibodies-first-dog-3-cats-risk-mink-farms[/url] in NL !