COVID-19 Coronavirus in Pets- Please Read!

lexi468

lexi468

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Hey guys!
I live in NYS in the US, and we have just gotten our first confirmed cases of the virus in animals, at The Bronx Zoo.

Tiger at NYC's Bronx Zoo Tests Positive for Coronavirus

My SO and I are both essential workers and I have just had my first day off in seven days, so neither of us have been interacting much with any of the animals, but I just wanted to reiterate what has already been said, which is to limit contact with your piggies if you have to leave the house, not just if you have symptoms of the virus.
Please stay safe everybody!
❤️❤️❤️
 
Yeah I have seen this. Most strange, I am shocked that a virus would make a jump to another species so quickly :( If it did originate in bats (they don't know) that would make three species infected.

I am hoping for more science to be revealed around this worrying development. All we can do as owners if if poorly practice stringent hygiene around our pets.
 
It’s a very worrying situation if this is the case for pets, particularly feline species
 
sport_billy said:
yeah absolutely. I think further studies needed for sure on this.... My concern on story is with a limited number of tests... they tested a Tiger?
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That was a conversation we had earlier especially somewhere as heavily infected as new york
 
I suppose the poor tiger poses are risk for the zoo keepers too 🤔 It’s a very unusual virus if that’s the case
 
Not an expert by any means but It all depends how much the virus has evolved to be able to infect tigers it may be a new branch of the virus that can only infect tigers and is very much localised to that zoo or (much less likely) the virus may not have had to evolve much at all and the original virus can jump back and forth (which would be worrying) part of what is difficult about corronaviruses is their ability to mutate but we are just one species amongst many others and a tiger is very different from domestic cats and by no means does this mean all animals are now at risk. it jumped from bats to humans by the human eating the bat or the humans eating another animal that had eaten the bat or lived close to a population of infected bats so I'm also not sure how close the humans must have gotten to the tiger for it to spread and I presume the tiger in question hasn't been eating any infected people recently. this is definitely concerning but scientists are learning new things about this virus every day and I don't think you should be worrying too much until we know more
 
PigglePuggle said:
I would wonder how a zoo keeper could get close enough to a tiger to infect them? I would want to see a re-test to make sure of this one, it really isnt how viruses usually jump species at all...
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@PigglePuggle , you're rather more scientifically qualified than most of us, could a virus cross species via insect bites, say if a mosquito bit an infected human then bit an animal? I'm thinking that that is how malaria spreads ..
 
Qualcast&Flymo said:
@PigglePuggle , you're rather more scientifically qualified than most of us, could a virus cross species via insect bites, say if a mosquito bit an infected human then bit an animal? I'm thinking that that is how malaria spreads ..
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Thats an interesting idea @Qualcast&Flymo but in the case of malaria and many other diseases transmitted by mosquitoes, the mosquito is needed as part of the pathogen lifecycle, and the mosquito and pathogen have co-evolved so the mosquito bit is essential for transmission.
However it is possible for some biting insects to act as "flying needles" as it were and move a virus from one individual to another just by mechanically transferring infected blood like a contaminated syringe!
I must ask my boss to ask his wife about this, I'm more of a parasite person myself but my boss's wife is an expert on viruses and researches and consults for public health England so she will know!
 
So if anyone is interested, the "expert" opinion on the corona virus tiger, directly from one of the UKs expert disease consultants who is my boss's wife...
Tests for Covid-19 are not 100% accurate- depending which type of test is done, accuracy ranges from 60 to 90%. Certainly the tests cannot accurately tell one type of coronavirus from another- Covid-19 cant yet be differentiated reliably from other coronaviruses by lab tests.
In humans this isnt too much of a problem for diagnostics as we dont get many coronaviruses, we arent natural hosts. Animals however carry many fairly harmless coronaviruses that could give a positive test result using the human diagnostic tests for Covid-19.
Hope that is helpful!
 
PigglePuggle said:
So if anyone is interested, the "expert" opinion on the corona virus tiger, directly from one of the UKs expert disease consultants who is my boss's wife...
Tests for Covid-19 are not 100% accurate- depending which type of test is done, accuracy ranges from 60 to 90%. Certainly the tests cannot accurately tell one type of coronavirus from another- Covid-19 cant yet be differentiated reliably from other coronaviruses by lab tests.
In humans this isnt too much of a problem for diagnostics as we dont get many coronaviruses, we arent natural hosts. Animals however carry many fairly harmless coronaviruses that could give a positive test result using the human diagnostic tests for Covid-19.
Hope that is helpful!
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That IS helpful - Thank You.

The fact I am picking up from your statement is that tests are not 100% accurate - there has been a lot of talk about testing people ... ( mainly to get NHS workers ) showing symptoms back to work :hmm:
 
PigglePuggle said:
So if anyone is interested, the "expert" opinion on the corona virus tiger, directly from one of the UKs expert disease consultants who is my boss's wife...
Tests for Covid-19 are not 100% accurate- depending which type of test is done, accuracy ranges from 60 to 90%. Certainly the tests cannot accurately tell one type of coronavirus from another- Covid-19 cant yet be differentiated reliably from other coronaviruses by lab tests.
In humans this isnt too much of a problem for diagnostics as we dont get many coronaviruses, we arent natural hosts. Animals however carry many fairly harmless coronaviruses that could give a positive test result using the human diagnostic tests for Covid-19.
Hope that is helpful!
Click to expand...

So what does that mean for negative tests? Is a negative more likely to be correct than a positive (assuming correct sampling technique)?
 
Yes the tests are not 100% accurate but are becoming more accurate over time, usually you'd want to do 2 tests a few days apart to give more confidence in the results. But no you couldnt at this stage rule out false negatives or false positives- these tests are all still very much in development as they've only been developed in the last few weeks, probably based on SARS and MERS testing.
But certainly the human diagnostic tests are not suitable for accurate animal diagnostics, they couldnt tell a mild case of tiger sniffles caused by another coronavirus from actual Covid-19.
 
On a more reassuring note, the tests are more likely to be accurate for people with a higher viral load who are more likely to be "super-spreaders" as there is more viral genetic material there for the tests to pick up. Science is never perfect, especially done under pressure in a crisis with no time to research and prepare!
 
The topic of pets and coronavirus will be discussed on the Jeremy Vine programme on Radio 2 today.
He always has real experts on his show, so it's worth listening to, particularly if all the "information" swirling round the internet makes you anxious.
The programme is on air 12-2pm, not sure exactly when the topic will be discussed, but it will be available online later too.
 
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