Animals as carriers: cats can presumably infect people with corona

Only rarely has there been any evidence that people have been infected with Sars-CoV-2 from an animal. However, this could be the case in cats, says a new study. It would probably already be the fourth animal species from which this is known.

Many animal species can become infected with Sars-CoV-2 in humans, but this has only rarely been proven the other way around. But according to a new study, cats are probably among the animals from which people can contract Covid-19. In the journal “Emerging Infectious Diseases”, researchers describe a case in Thailand in which a veterinarian was infected with the virus in August 2021. She had treated and sneezed on a cat that had tested positive in the southern Thai city of Songkhla.

The animal probably got the virus from its two owners, writes the group led by Sarunyou Chusri from the Prince of Songkla University in Songkhla. Genome sequencing showed that the viruses found in the cat, the veterinarian and the owners were very closely related.

However, researchers emphasize in a report by the “New York Times” that the virus is transmitted much more frequently from humans to cats than in the opposite direction. However, the case underscores the need to isolate household animals in the event of an infection, said infectious disease specialist Scott Weese from the Canadian University of Guelph: “I think it’s important for us to recognize that the virus is still between species can change.”

The cat would now be the fourth animal that is known or at least there is evidence that it can transmit Sars-CoV-2 to humans. In the Netherlands, for example, people on a breeding farm had contracted infected mink. In Hong Kong, an outbreak in humans had been linked to hamsters in a pet shop. There is also evidence of transmission of the coronavirus from white-tailed deer to humans.

Many researchers assume that the Sars-CoV-2 virus originally jumped from an animal, either a bat or an intermediate host, to humans, which led to the outbreak of the pandemic. However, it is not yet known which animal it could have been.