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. 2021 Apr 14;13(4):673.
doi: 10.3390/v13040673.

Household Cases Suggest That Cats Belonging to Owners with COVID-19 Have a Limited Role in Virus Transmission

Pierre Bessière  1 , Maxime Fusade-Boyer  1 , Mathilda Walch  1 , Laetitia Lèbre  1 , Jessie Brun  2 , Guillaume Croville  1 , Séverine Boullier  3 , Marie-Christine Cadiergues  2   4 , Jean-Luc Guérin  1
Affiliations

Household Cases Suggest That Cats Belonging to Owners with COVID-19 Have a Limited Role in Virus Transmission

Pierre Bessière et al. Viruses. .

Abstract

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) is responsible for COVID-19 and spread rapidly following its emergence in Wuhan in 2019. Although cats are, among other domestic animals, susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection, little is known about their epidemiological role in the dynamics of a household infection. In this study, we monitored five cats for viral shedding daily. Each cat was confined with its COVID-19 positive owners in separate households. Low loads of viral nucleic acid were found in two cats, but only one developed anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, which suggests that cats have a limited role in COVID-19 epidemiology.

Keywords: COVID-19; cats; reverse-zoonosis.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Whole-genome maximum likelihood phylogenetic tree of SARS-CoV-2. The viruses in Table 1, sequence from case 3, and the owner-derived sequence are both labelled in red. Other feline-derived viral sequences are labeled in purple. Bootstrap supports >60% are indicated next to the nodes; the scale bar indicates the numbers of nucleotide substitutions per site. The strain hCoV-19/Wuhan/WIV04/2019 was used as the outgroup.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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