COVID Transmissions for 7-2-2021
It's infecting cats and dogs out there!
Greetings from an undisclosed location in my apartment. Welcome to COVID Transmissions.
It has been 592 days since the first documented human case of COVID-19.
Here in the US, it is the 4th of July weekend. We are unfortunately on track to miss President Biden’s goal of 70% adult vaccination in the US by the holiday, but in some pats of the country it should be a nice weekend to safely celebrate. I hope you can all enjoy your weekend—whether it’s a holiday for you or not. There will most likely NOT be an issue of COVID Transmissions until next Wednesday, in light of the holiday.
Today we’ll talk about infections in house pets like cats and dogs, and also I share an educational resource that might be useful for the person in your life who has questions about vaccines—a resource that gets them access to real virologists, live.
Bolded terms are linked to the running newsletter glossary.
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Now, let’s talk COVID.
Pets frequently catch COVID-19 from their owners
Recent results presented at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECMID) has shown that house pets like cats and dogs frequently become infected with SARS-CoV-2 from their owners.
Early in the pandemic, it became clear that SARS-CoV-2 has a “wide host range,” meaning it is capable of infecting a wide variety of different species. This is, by the way, a good reason to believe it is likely that the virus entered humans from animals, since there are a great deal of potential vectors for that spillover event.
You may remember, early on, that there were outbreaks at various zoos, and in fact the first documented US case was a zoo tiger. The CDC maintains an information page about COVID-19 in animals: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/animals.html
The ability of animals to contract COVID-19 complicates matters related to disease control. It has been known for quite some time that cats and also animals generally related to ferrets readily become infected with COVID-19 from humans. Early in the pandemic, Denmark culled its entire mink population because of a variant that emerged in mink farms in that country: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/animal-news/here-s-why-denmark-culled-17-million-minks-now-plans-n1249610
Also, as long as human-adjacent animals are capable of acting as reservoirs for SARS-CoV-2, it will mean that even local eradication efforts in places with high vaccination rates will be challenging.
In the study presented at ECMID, 310 household pets (156 dogs, 154 cats) from homes with a positively-identified human case were tested for evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Several (6 cats, 7 dogs) animals tested PCR positive and about 4 times as many animals showed antibody evidence of past infection (31 cats and 23 dogs). Interestingly, when positive cases were detected, the researchers went back to test other animals that lived in the same households and found few secondary cases. This suggests that generally these animals do not pass SARS-CoV-2 to one another, although the numbers here are quite small so I would not make much of this last point.
The findings here suggest that house pets can act as a potentially meaningful reservoir for SARS-CoV-2, but we need to do more analysis of this type to get a better handle on it. For example, nothing here suggests an animal-to-human infection originating in a house pet. Showing that infection can travel both ways would be an important result.
You can read more about the presentation here: https://phys.org/news/2021-07-common-pet-dogs-cats-covid-.html
American Society for Virology Vaccine Education Sessions
The American Society for Virology (ASV), an organization to which I once belonged when I was an active virology lab bench researcher, has been running an excellent series of vaccine education town halls. These are intend to allow members of the public to have an open forum to connect directly with actual virologists who are willing to answer questions about COVID-19 vaccines. Importantly, the sessions are held in both English and Spanish (specific sessions are dedicated to either language). you can find out more here: https://asv.org/education/
Also, here is a short teaser that ASV recorded to help describe the sessions:
Most of you who read this newsletter know a lot about these vaccines, but I bet you may have friends, relatives, frenemies, kissing cousins, passing acquaintances, or even bitter rivals who might still be on the fence about vaccination. Please, share these resources with them to help encourage more people to become vaccinated.
What am I doing to cope with the pandemic? This:
Kerbal Space Program
I am SO late to the party on this, but recently I started playing the nearly decade-old computer game Kerbal Space Program. In the game, you run a space program for a planet of aliens called Kerbals. The game allows you to build essentially whatever spacecraft you please, meaning you are perfectly welcome to create a deathtrap for your Kerbal astronauts. In fact you’re quite likely to, because aerospace engineering is hard, and even with the corners that the game cuts for the sake of simplicity, it’s not easy to get off the surface of a planet and return to tell the tale.
Right now, I’m trying to succeed at getting a ship into orbit with enough fuel to get it back down. It’s been a process, and I have really come to appreciate the bravery of the astronauts and cosmonauts who tried to accomplish that feat in real life.
Anyway, the game is a lot of fun and I highly recommend it if, like me, you were not one of the many legions of people who already played it.
You might have some questions or comments! Send them in. As several folks have figured out, you can also email me if you have a comment that you don’t want to share with the whole group.
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Though I can’t correct the emailed version after it has been sent, I do update the online post of the newsletter every time a mistake is brought to my attention.
No corrections since last issue.
See you all next time. And don’t forget to share the newsletter if you liked it.
Always,
JS