The UAB Veterinary Clinical Hospital answers questions on coronavirus and pets
The UAB Veterinary Clinical Hospital has published a website (in Catalan and Spanish) to answer the most common doubts on coronavirus and pets. Must we avoid contact with our own pets? Is there a coronavirus vaccine for cats and dogs? These are some of the questions answered in the website. Until the moment, there has been no evidence that cronavirus, can affect pets or that they are capable of transmitting the disease.
19/03/2020
As a mere precaution, it is recommended that people infected with COVID-19 avoid contact with their pets, as they do with other people.
In the past few days, the UAB Veterinary Clinical Hospital (HCV) has received many calls and messages from owners worried about the health of their pets and becoming infected with coronavirus. The HCV's message is clear: until now there has been no evidence that SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus causing COVID-19, can affect pets or that they can transmit the disease.
In this specific website, the HCV aims to answer some of the most common doubts about coronavirus in relation to house pets, such as: What do we know about Covid-19 and house pets? Must we avoid contact with our own pets? Is there a vaccine for cats and dogs?
The page also informs uses that until now, no evidence has been found that pets can catch or transmit the virus. It also explains that cats and dogs (and also ferrets) can also be affected by a coronavirus, but that it is generally related to the alfa-coronavirus (a different genre than the beta-coronavirus SARS-CoV-2) which normally causes digestive problems.
There are vaccines for canine enteric coronaviruses (causing digestive problems) and for feline infectious peritonitis, a usually fatal disease. However, neither of these vaccines protect against the virus produced by the current outbreak of COVID-19 and there is no use in vaccinating cats and dogs to protect them.
Although until now no evidence has been found that demonstrates that house pets can become infected with the virus, there is still much unknown about the new coronavirus and, as a mere precaution, it is advised that people testing positive for COVID-19 avoid contact with their pets just as they should keep away from other people.
The official Veternarian Association of Barcelona also sent out a press releases with questions, answers and recommendations on COVID-19 and house pets which can be viewed online clicking HERE.
All the information offered there is obtained from the documents published by the WSAVA (World Small Animal Veterinary Association), the OIE (World Organization for Animal Health) and the OMS (Organització Mundial de la Salut) which are constantly being updated.
The Veterinary Clinical Hospital (HCV) is a foundation run by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona created in 1990. Many veterinarians at the HCV are lecturers at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine who, in addition to their teaching and research activities, offer all of their clinical experience to helping more than 22,000 patients each year.
Webpage on Coronavirus and Pets: https://hcv.uab.cat/ca/presentacio/hcv-informa/coronavirus-i-mascotes/
More information on coronavirus can be found here: www.uab.cat/coronavirus