Researchers have found that some cats can transmit the emerging coronavirus, which causes Covid-19 disease, to others, but they may not show any symptoms, and that there are no reports of transmission from them to humans, according to the New York Times.
This comes as a follow-up to previous laboratory research related to domestic cats as well as tigers and lions at the Bronx Zoo, which was proven to be infected with the emerging corona virus.
In many cases - as the newspaper says - there were mild symptoms on these cats, but six cats in a new laboratory experiment did not get sick at all and was able to expel the virus from their bodies on their own.
In this study - conducted by Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin Veterinary Medicine and Peter Halfman of the University of Wisconsin Madison, along with other researchers from the United States and Japan - three domestic cats were injected with the emerging corona virus - whose scientific name is SARS Cove 2 - and put together with each of them Uninfected cat in one cage.
The study was published in the "New England Journal of Medicine".
In the first test of the cats that were infected with the virus, the result was positive, then her female companions in the cages also infected him, but none of them were sick, and after six days at most, they were all free of the virus.
The newspaper reported that the virus is transmitted from humans to cats, but there are no reports of human infection with a virus transmitted from cats, although the study's supervisors believe that cutting this requires further research.
When cats are infected, cats will excrete virus particles in the same way that humans do, which is the same virus that affects people, which means that the possibility of transmission of the virus from cats to humans is theoretically possible, said Karen Terrio, head of the animal pathology program at the University of Illinois Veterinary Medicine.
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"Given the limited social circle of most domestic cats, cats are more likely to become infected due to contact with a member of their family," Terio wrote - which did not participate in the study - in an email.
The researchers considered that there is no need for people to abandon their pet cats, because the risk of infection with the virus comes from humans, not pets.
Veterinarian Halvman said that any healthy person can continue his life as usual with his cats, adding, "My cat sleeps on a pillow right next to me," and when asked: Did the results of the study change this habit? He replied, "It was there last night."
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Netherlands
The RTL network reported Friday, quoting the Dutch Minister of Agriculture, that a dog and three domestic cats in the Netherlands were infected with the emerging coronavirus.
RTL quoted Minister Carola Schotten as saying, "Everything indicates that the infection has been passed on to these animals from their owners. If you are sick, do not hug your cat or dog."
Other animal infections were reported from time to time throughout the Corona pandemic, and the Netherlands' National Institute of Health says that the risk of animal transmission to humans is very low.
On May 8, Reuters reported a university professor that he had discovered that a domestic cat in the Spanish province of Catalonia had contracted the Corona virus during its autopsy.
The Professor at the Animal Health Research Institute, Joaquim Sigales - who performed the anatomical examination of the cat - added that she was not killed because of her infection with the virus, but rather because she was previously infected with a respiratory condition that is common in cats.
This cat is the sixth cat to be monitored infected with the virus globally, and was owned by a family residing in a neighborhood in Barcelona in which many cases of HIV infection were monitored.
The cat's body was subjected to anatomical examination on April 22, and it was found that its body contained a small amount of the virus.
The World Health Organization has said that all available evidence indicates that the emerging coronavirus has appeared in animals, but the way it has crossed the barrier of a type of animal-borne virus - most likely a bat - into a human-transmitted virus is not yet clear.
Cigales said that the possibility of transmission from humans to cats is minimal, if not nonexistent, and that transmission of the virus from one cat to another is unthinkable.
"This virus has been proven to be very successful in transmission between people, but its transmission between animals and people remains exceptional, special cases," he added.
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Rodents also,
and a study published last April had reported that cats may be infected with the emerging coronavirus, but dogs do not appear to be susceptible to infection.
The study also found that rodents could also be infected with the SARS Cove-2 virus, but researchers found that dogs, chickens, pigs and ducks were unlikely to contract the virus.
The study, which was based on research conducted in China in January and February last, said that the researchers found that cats and rodents are highly susceptible to infection with the virus when they try to infect animals with infection by entering particles infected with the virus through the nose.
They also found that the infection can be transmitted between cats through a respiratory spray, and infected cats carry the virus in the mouth, nose and small intestine, and young cats that have been exposed to the virus show pain in the lung, nose and throat.
The virus is found on the top of the respiratory system of rodents but does not cause severe disease.
Antibody tests showed that dogs were less likely to be infected with the virus, while no strains of the virus were found in pigs, chickens and ducks that had been injected with the virus.