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By Scott Weese on July 30, 2020
As reports of positive animals continue to trickle in, we clearly know that some domestic animal species are susceptible, at least to some degree, to this virus.
A recent article in National Geographic has flooded my inbox with emails about the story and the broader question about whether we need to test more.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2020/07/first-dog-to-test-positive-for-covid-in-us-dies/?cmpid=org=ngp::mc=crm-email::src=ngp::cmp=editorial::add=SpecialEdition_COVIDPET_20200729&rid=E3097E7FD5F39E9AFA1153F9722B4017 - https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2020/07/first-dog-to-test-positive-for-covid-in-us-dies/?
My take… Do we need more testing? Yes. We know little about human-pet transmission , pet-pet transmission and the clinical implications for animals or people.
Do we need more patient testing done in vet practices? Not really.
It’s low yield testing once we know pets can be infected, and there are some risks when it comes to testing of potentially actively infected animals.
Whether it’s 10, 20 or 200 dogs/cats have been diagnosed, it doesn’t change the story if we don’t know the context, have good information about the cases, have other clinical data to help figure out whether the test result means the animal actually had COVID and know about the concurrently tested negatives.
From a clinical standpoint, I think of three questions:
Is there a realistic chance that the pet was exposed?
Does the pet have clinical signs that could realistically be COVID-19? What would I do with the result (or…more specifically…would I do anything differently with a positive vs negative result)?
The answer to the 3rd one is almost always ‘no’, so the hassles and risks involved with taking a pet to a clinic for testing only make sense if we are going to learn something good from the result. That’s rarely going to be the case now.
We do need more research testing to answer questions about prevalence, clinical implications and transmission, as we can’t answer those through piecing together clinical testing results.
Getting a data dump from a lab that says “500 cats tested positive” tells us a lot less than a research study that looks at positives and negatives, and can put the story together about things like how often there is human-pet transmission, how often infected pets get sick, what risk factors increase the odds of transmission or illness, how long infected pets shed the virus and, ideally, to help put the story together about the risk of subsequent transmission to animals or people.
Various research studies are underway to answer those. They’re not easy, though.
Our studies have run into the good problem of decreasing numbers of potential participants since case numbers are very low in this region. Few people are getting infected so few pets have the chance of being exposed. If there’s any study I’d like to see compromised by low case numbers, it’s this one. I really want us to be able to answer some interesting questions but I can live with enrolment hassles if it’s because the virus stays under reasonable control.
Time will tell.
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'A man who does not think and plan long ahead will find trouble right at his door.'
--Confucius
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