If you had COVID-19 , there ’s a good fortune your deary may have caught it too , according to a new study .
Reporting in the journalEmerging Infectious Diseases , investigator tried to gauge how common SARS - CoV-2 antibody were among cats and dog across Italy . Their findings prove that a total of 16.2 percent of cats and 2.3 pct of heel had make antibodies to the computer virus responsible for for COVID-19 between March and June 2020 , indicating they had also been infect with the virus . what is more , it looks like 20 pct of cats and 3.2 of Canis familiaris who had SARS - CoV-2 - infected owners were infected with the computer virus .
The study is relatively modest and may not be representative of the wider universe — at the time of the study , Italy was hold up a vicious first wave — but it hints that a meaning figure of pets , particularly cats , have been infected with SARS - CoV-2 if their owner had catch the computer virus .
To attain their findings , scientist in Italy studied 198 sample from pet ( 130 from dogs and 68 from qat ) collected from around the nation , where there was a significant undulation of casing at the fourth dimension . As a control , they also looked at 100 samples ( 65 from dog and 35 from cats ) garner in different region of Italy before the pandemic . totally , 54 cat and 93 weenie lived in households where multitude had tested plus for SARS - CoV-2 .
Eleven cats and three weenie were base to be seropositive for SARS - CoV-2 . All had owners who had been infect by SARS - CoV-2 , suggesting they caught the computer virus from their human fellow .
Most of the pets remained symptomless , with just four out of the 14 animals display any symptoms , namely sneeze , cough , and a too big for one’s breeches nose .
“ A high share of feline samples quiz positively charged , confirming a in high spirits susceptibility and prevalence in cats than in dogs cover in previous experiments , ” the paper read . “ The susceptibility of cats to SARS - related human coronaviruses also was reported in 2003 when a study confirmed that cats were susceptible to infection and could transmit the virus to other in - contact animals . "
In the other days of the COVID-19 pandemic , a number ofreports popped uparound the world showing hombre anddogswere catching the infection from their proprietor . This was followed byaccounts of tigersandgorillas in zoostesting positive for the virus , as well asminksheld enwrapped in fur farms .
fortuitously , the risk to pets is likely relatively low and instances of the contagion are much lower than humans . While there have been a small number of report fatalities in Arabian tea , most beast appear to recover swimmingly from the disease . However , one early study didfind a linkbetween heart problems in qat and the new COVID-19 variants . PotentialCOVID vaccines for animalsare being developed , though whether pets will postulate them is yet to be reckon .
