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The Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta said its Asian small-clawed otters tested positive for COVID-19.
The aquarium suspects the otters were caught from an asymptomatic staff member.
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In California, the San Diego Zoo reported in January that at least two of its gorillas had tested positive for COVID-19.
They are the first reported cases in great apes.
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| A snow leopard tested positive for COVID-19 in December at the Louisville Zoo, in the US It is likely that it was infected by contact with an asymptomatic staff member "despite the precautions taken by the zoo" animal health authorities said.
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| Spanish authorities ordered nearly 100,000 minks to be euthanized after an outbreak on a farm, where the animals are raised to wear their fur, after several of them tested positive for the new coronavirus. Minks are added to the list of animals that have tested positive for covid-19, the disease that has infected more than 13 million in the world and has left more than half a million deaths. See in this gallery other animals that have tested positive for the virus and what we know about these infections.
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Two cats in New York were reported to be infected with the new coronavirus on April 22, federal officials announced.
Both had mild respiratory symptoms.
They were the first pets in the U.S. to test positive, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
Archive image.
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Tigers: also in April, the first case of a covid-19 positive tiger was reported.
It was about a tiger at the Bronx Zoo, New York.
Later, seven other big cats were infected, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society.
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This pug named Winston may have been the first dog in the United States to test positive for coronavirus, according to researchers.
The dog was tested as part of the study involving his family, who had had the disease.
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Ferrets can also get it.
One study found that ferrets were also "efficient" replicators of the virus, meaning the virus can easily grow and reproduce on their long, slippery bodies.
"SARS-CoV-2 can replicate in the upper respiratory tract of ferrets for up to eight days, without causing serious illness or death," the study said.
The study did not consider a longer time frame.
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| Archive image. 2 dogs in Hong Kong and a cat in Belgium also tested positive in April, but the American Veterinary Medical Association gave a piece of reassurance on its website: "Infectious Disease Experts and Various International and National Human and Animal Health Organizations agree that there is no evidence at this time indicating that pets transmit COVID-19 to other animals, including people. "
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Pets may not infect people with coronavirus, but pet owners should protect cats, dogs, and other companion animals, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned. .
“Although it does not appear that animals can give you the virus, it seems that you can infect them.
So if you are sick, avoid direct contact with your pets.
If possible, have someone else take care of them until you are healthy again, ”says the FDA in a video.
(CNN) -
Scientists have discovered that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus spreads among white-tailed deer and other wildlife in the United States.
People are the likely source, but that doesn't mean the virus can't evolve between these animals and then back into humans, and researchers are concerned about what this spread means for the risk of future pandemics.
There is little doubt that SARS-Cov-2, the virus that caused the ongoing pandemic, came from an animal, almost certainly a bat.
And the prevailing scientific opinion is that there is an intermediate host, an animal of some kind, that was infected by a bat or bats and then infected people.
It is also clear that people can infect animals.
Pets such as cats, zoo animals such as gorillas and snow leopards, and farm minks can become infected.
Several cases have been reported, and evidence of changes in the viruses that infect mink has led to massive slaughter of these animals on farms.
PHOTOS |
Leopards, otters, tigers and other animals that have tested positive for coronavirus
The latest species of wildlife animal to catch the eye of biologists is white-tailed deer.
It's no wonder farm deer catch the virus from people.
Any visitor to a deer farm knows that the animals behave like goats, poking their wet noses into the pockets, hands, and faces of visitors or human caretakers as they clamor for food and treats, leaving them exposed to infection.
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But how do wild deer spread?
FDA warns pet owners that their animals could become infected with coronavirus
Spread of coronavirus among deer
"If someone bites into an apple and throws it or even sneezed into a tissue and dropped it (creates contagion)," speculated Dr. Suresh Kuchipudi of the Pennsylvania State University Animal Diagnostic Laboratory, who helped lead a study published earlier this month, which found that a third of deer tested in Iowa between September 2020 and January 2021 showed evidence of COVID-19 infection.
Sewage has been found to carry the virus, so contaminated water could be a source, he added, or that people spit or pollute the environment in other ways.
Therefore, deer can spread the virus to each other.
"Keep in mind that these are highly susceptible animals, although it is not known how much virus they need to become infected," Kuchipudi told CNN.
"An urgent question arises: We know that deer are effectively transmitting viruses to each other, and so who are they transmitting it to?"
It is also possible for another species to contract the virus from people and infect deer.
"We don't know what's going on in our own country and we need to find out," said Hon Ip of the US Geological Survey in Wisconsin.
Coronavirus: UBA researchers test a vaccine on animals
Viral hotspots among rodents
Ip and his colleagues tested animals they found around a mink farm that was the site of an outbreak in Utah and found that skunks, mice and other animals were susceptible to a variety of coronaviruses.
They were originally concerned that mink, which contracted the virus that causes COVID-19 in people, could infect local wildlife.
They found no indication of that.
"It was a very pleasant surprise," Ip told CNN.
But mice, raccoons, skunks and other animals carried a load of other coronaviruses.
"The amount of coronavirus and the diversity was a surprise," Ip said.
"Our findings indicate an unexpectedly high prevalence of coronavirus among domestic and wild animals tested on mink farms and raise the possibility that these operations could be potential hotspots for future trans-specific viral spread and emergence of new pandemic coronaviruses, "they wrote in a report published in Viruses magazine in October.
Researchers like Ip and Kuchipudi say many more studies like this are needed.
Kuchipudi and his colleagues conducted their study after the United States Department of Agriculture published research in July that found that 40% of deer tested in four states had antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, evidence that they had been infected.
There are several reasons why scientists do not want a virus like the one that causes COVID-19 to infect animals.
For one thing, it creates what's known as a reservoir, so that even in the unlikely event that everyone gets vaccinated and the virus stops circulating between people, it would still circulate between animals and could re-infect people with the virus. weather.
However, the risk that it may change and evolve is more likely.
This can happen in two ways.
One is constant adaptation.
As it infects different species, the virus will change to better suit those species and that could make it more or less dangerous for humans.
Another route for change: Viruses can take shortcuts by exchanging large chunks of genetic material in a process called recombination.
The flu is especially good at this, but coronaviruses can do it too.
If an animal is infected with more than one coronavirus at a time, the two types can mix and match genes and potentially present new variants.
"Recombination is one of the main mechanisms for the evolution of the coronavirus," said Ip.
So if animals are already carriers of their own strains of coronavirus, and people are infecting them with strains that cause pandemics among humans, there is a possibility that these viruses infect animals at the same time, exchange genetic material, and den rise to new viruses.
Pandemic viral species.
The coronavirus almost certainly comes from an animal, not a laboratory leak, says expert group
Pets and covid-19, is there a risk of contagion?
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Origins of the pandemic
"This raises very urgent questions about the trajectory of this pandemic," Kuchipudi said.
If there are animals like the white-tailed deer that become infected with SARS-CoV-2 so easily and spread the virus between them so easily, that is a red flag.
That means much better surveillance is needed to see what other animals might be being infected by people or other animals, and what threat they might pose to other animals and to people.
"We need to be prepared for any variant that may arise," he said.
Additionally, Ip said, surveillance is needed to find out which coronaviruses live in animals that could be the source of the next pandemic, not just among bats in remote caves in Southeast Asia, but perhaps among mice, deer, or raccoons in the backyards of the city. United States Midwest.
And people must remember that humans are the main source of the spread of the virus.
Even if covid-19 originally came from animals, humans are the species that have amplified and spread it.
And there is an answer to that extension.
"Vaccination rates are not uniform across the world," Kuchipudi said.
"As long as there are susceptible humans, we provide opportunities for the virus to circulate and change. More concerted efforts need to be made to vaccinate as many people as possible so that we can at least minimize human-to-human transmission."
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