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Cat as a pet: infection with the owners
Photo: Westend61 / Getty Images
Pets have become a trend during the corona pandemic.
The association for the German dog industry estimates that sales of dogs have increased by 20 percent in the past year alone.
Apparently, the four-legged friends were cuddled a lot during the lockdown, and the same applies to cats and small animals.
It is known that masters and mistresses can infect their pets with Sars-CoV-2. But so far one has assumed more individual cases. But now researchers are reporting that such routes of infection are likely to occur more frequently than previously assumed. Two studies will be presented in the coming days at the European Congress for Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) in Basel.
According to the veterinarian Dorothee Bienzle from the Canadian University in Guelph, the symptoms in the infected animals range from weakness and appetite to cough, runny noses, breathing problems and diarrhea. Cats that spend a lot of time with their owners and sleep on their beds are particularly susceptible to the virus. "Cats more often sleep close to their owners' faces, which exposes them to more infection," said a statement.
Bienzle and colleagues tested 48 cats and 54 dogs from 77 households in which someone had been infected with the corona virus.
They found antibodies in 67 percent of the cats and 43 percent of the dogs, which indicates a previous infection.
20 percent of the dogs would have had symptoms, 27 percent of the cats.
In most cases, the disease passed away without any problems.
"Anyone who has Covid-19 should avoid contact with their dog or cat"
In a similar study by a team led by the veterinarian Els Broens from the University of Utrecht, each with 150 dogs and cats from almost 200 households of infected people in the Netherlands, a PCR or antibody test produced a positive result in around every fifth animal. It was used to detect current and past infections. The Canadians tested animals from a shelter and stray cats as controls. For them, the positive rate was significantly lower. Both study directors conclude from this and from earlier studies that the animals become infected from their owners. The data have not yet appeared in a peer-reviewed journal, but have been reviewed by congress scientists.
"If you have Covid-19, you should avoid contact with your dog or cat, as you should with humans," the veterinarian Broens is quoted as saying.
The health of the animals is not a problem.
You would have had no or only mild symptoms of Covid-19.
"It is clear that these animals pick up the pathogen from humans and apparently have no further epidemiological significance," said the President of the Friedrich Loeffler Institute, Thomas Mettenleiter, referring to domestic animals.
Corona cases have been reportable since summer 2020.
According to Mettenleiter, these have so far been isolated cases: According to the FLI, there are seven reports on cats and two on dogs, which can each relate to more than one animal.
"The main concern is the potential risk that pets could become a reservoir for the virus and that the virus could get back into the population through them," says veterinarian Broens.
So far, however, no transmission of the virus from a pet to an owner has been detected, she emphasized.
Experts assume that a wide range of animal species can be infected with Sars-CoV-2.
Deaths among zoo animals such as lions have also become known.
A high number of infections affected minks in fur farming, for example in Denmark.
Many of the animals were sometimes killed there - also to prevent the virus from changing in the long term in the animal organisms and becoming more dangerous.
joe / dpa
