Infected with COVID-19? Cuddling your pet cat or dog can make them sick, says study
Global News
The research, published this month in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, involved 69 cats and 49 dogs, including pets and animals from shelters and neuter clinics.
Cat and dog owners who cuddle their pets when infected with COVID-19 could end up making the animals sick with the virus, according to a Canadian study.
The study said that while it was already known that animals including cats, dogs, ferrets and hamsters seem to be susceptible to COVID-19, transmission may be happening more often than previously thought.
The research, published this month in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, involved 69 cats and 49 dogs, including pets and animals from shelters and neuter clinics.
Pet owners were also asked to fill out an online survey about the nature of their interaction with their animals.
“These data indicate relatively common transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from humans to animals and that certain human-animal contacts _ example, kissing the pet, pet sleeping on the bed _ appear to increase the risk,” said the study.
“We inferred that infections in dogs and cats reflect direct transmission from humans to animals, given the pandemic nature of this virus in humans and limited contact of most household pets with other animals.”
Dogs and cats that lived in shelters showed lower rates of COVID-19 infection compared with those that lived with humans, said study co-author Prof. Scott Weese of the University of Guelph’s Ontario Veterinary College.
“It was a fairly substantial difference as we would have expected,” said Weese.
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