Study Confirms Cats Can Become Infected With and May Transmit COVID-19 to Other Cats
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:
Study confirms cats can become infected with and may transmit COVID-19 to other cats:
Professor of Pathobiological Sciences at the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine Yoshihiro Kawaoka led the study, in which researchers administered to three cats SARS-CoV-2 isolated from a human patient. The following day, the researchers swabbed the nasal passages of the cats and were able to detect the virus in two of the animals. Within three days, they detected the virus in all of the cats.
The day after the researchers administered virus to the first three cats, they placed another cat in each of their cages. Researchers did not administer SARS-CoV-2 virus to these cats.
Each day, the researchers took nasal and rectal swabs from all six cats to assess them for the presence of the virus. Within two days, one of the previously uninfected cats was shedding virus, detected in the nasal swab, and within six days, all of the cats were shedding virus. None of the rectal swabs contained virus.
Each cat shed SARS-CoV-2 from their nasal passages for up to six days. The virus was not lethal and none of the cats showed signs of illness. All of the cats ultimately cleared the virus.
"That was a major finding for us -- the cats did not have symptoms," says Kawaoka, who also holds a faculty appointment at the University of Tokyo. Kawaoka is also helping lead an effort to create a human COVID-19 vaccine called CoroFlu.
Peter J. Halfmann, Masato Hatta, Shiho Chiba, Tadashi Maemura, Shufang Fan, Makoto Takeda, Noriko Kinoshita, Shin-ichiro Hattori, Yuko Sakai-Tagawa, Kiyoko Iwatsuki-Horimoto, Masaki Imai, Yoshihiro Kawaoka. Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in Domestic Cats. New England Journal of Medicine, 2020; DOI: 10.1056/NEJMc2013400
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