Jahnavi Sarma
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Written By: Jahnavi Sarma | Updated : May 15, 2020 3:05 PM IST
Since there is a likelihood of your pet catching the virus from you, you need to take care that this does not happen. @Shutterstock
There seems to be no end in sight of the COVID-19 pandemic. With cases still not showing a downward trend in most countries of the world, there is now a disturbing trend that has come to light. A new study says that cats without any symptoms may be carriers of this new variant of coronavirus. Not only this, they can also spread this disease among other cats. We have seen earlier that cats can indeed by infected with this virus. But so far it was not known that they are also asymptomatic carriers of the virus. This is a serious and worrying development that is bound to be of concern to many people who keep cats as pets.
Now, researchers from the University of Wisconsin, US, say that cats without any symptoms can infect other cats with the virus. For the study, which is published in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers isolated the COVID-19 virus from a human patient and administered it to three cats. The virus showed in the nasal swabs of two cats the following day, and in all three within three days. All the cats were placed in separate cages. The day after administering the virus, researchers put a second healthy cat in each cage. They saw that, within six days, all cats were shedding the virus. Another thing of interest here is that the virus was detected in nasal swabs and not in rectal swabs. According to researchers, each cat shed the virus for up to six days and none of them had any symptoms at all. And, all of them recovered fully from the disease.
We already know that a tiger at New York's Bronx Zoo tested positive for COVID-19 last month. The source of this was an asymptomatic zoo employee. In the next few weeks, other tigers and lions at the zoo also tested positive. In another instance, a domestic cat in Belgium caught the infection from the owner.
In an earlier study, to see if cats are at risk of this virus, Chinese researchers injected a few cats with it. They then kept them in cages next to 3 healthy ones. Though the virus RNA was found in all the injected cats, it was found in only one of the healthy ones. The other two were not infected. This study was published in Science. According to researchers, this was not conclusive evidence that cats can transmit the virus to other cats.
The new study proves that cats can infect other cats and they can also catch the infection from their human parents. This is because feline and human cells have similar ACE2 receptors, the enzymes that facilitate the virus's entry in the body. But experts say that the probability of feline to human transmission is rare and it is more likely that your cat may get it from you than the other way around.
Since there is a likelihood of your pet catching the virus from you, you need to take care that this does not happen. Avoid contact with your pet if you have symptoms. This means no petting, cuddling or kissing. The norms of social distancing applies here too.
