There Was a Hidden Covid-19 Plague Among Pets, Study Ideas

Contact with your pets during the epidemic can be more dangerous than you might think – that is. A new study this week shows that people transmit covid-19 infections to their four-legged companions, even though pets do not seem to be transmitted to other households. Although most coronavirus infections are mild or severe, their findings may serve as a warning to owners of infected animals.

Since the beginning of the epidemic, there have been reports of animals infected with the virus behind covid-19. Dogs, cats (adults and children), as well as members of the weasel family, as minks are otters, both are known to be HIV positive, usually through humans. But with the exception of minks, almost all of these cases are considered to be more severe than human infections and may not be contagious.

Most studies of animals that receive covid-19 have only been performed in laboratory experiments or special cases. This new study, provided this week at the European Congress of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, it seems to be one of the first to try to figure out how often these cases occur.

Veterinarians in the Netherlands, led by Els Broens of Utrecht University, have ordered a hospital visit and visits about 200 families where one person is known to have been infected at one time or another. They then tested the dogs and their cats for coronavirus infection, as well as antibodies that have already been shown. In all, 156 dogs and 154 cats were tested.

At that time, 4.2% of the animals were diagnosed with an infectious disease, while 17% had antibodies. But pets seem to have fewer symptoms when they get sick. Researchers have also found little evidence that the disease has spread from pets to other pets, as well as to other pets, and has shown that humans are to blame for these small outbreaks.

Many scientists believe that the first forms of coronavirus may have been transmitted from animals to humans, and mink has passed on the germs to humans when mink piles erupted. But to date, there have been no definite cases of covid-19 transplantation.

“About one in five pets get the disease from their owners,” Broens said he was told Reuters. “Unfortunately, the animals don’t get sick because of this.”

Similarly, research from other countries will be conducted to confirm the team’s findings. But even though the animals are at high risk, Broens and his colleagues think that owners who think they have caught covid 19 should be as careful around their pets as they are with other people. And unfortunately, this warning also applies to sleep.

“Most pet owners are very communicative, if they sleep with their pets in their bed, then you can imagine that there is a close connection, for this spread to take place,” he told Reuters.