Pets can also become infected with Corona – this has already been shown in a number of cases in Germany. This unsettles some pet owners: How dangerous is Omikron for them?
The Federal Research Institute for Animal Health has no evidence of relevant transmission of the Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus from pets to humans in Germany. This was announced by Elke Reinking, spokeswoman for the Friedrich Loeffler Institute (FLI), at the request of the German Press Agency. It had previously become known that the Hong Kong authorities wanted to put about 2,000 hamsters and other small animals to sleep out of concern for Corona.
As a rule, the infection occurs from humans to animals, said Reinking, referring to 13 infections in pets that have been reported in Germany so far, one in a dog and twelve in cats. So far, nothing is known about infections of pets in Germany with the rapidly spreading omicron variant. “We don’t yet know exactly how omicron behaves in pets,” says Reinking. The ability to bind to receptors in humans alone does not allow any conclusions to be drawn about the severity of a disease or the infectivity of pets.
Killing of 2000 hamsters after Corona disease
The killing of around 2,000 hamsters and other small animals was recently ordered in Hong Kong for fear that the virus could spread among the animals and also spread to humans. According to reports, the cause was the case of a pet shop owner who had been diagnosed with the first infection with the Delta variant in Hong Kong for months. Subsequently, hamsters imported from the Netherlands tested positive in their shop.
FLI spokeswoman Reinking pointed out that transmission of the virus from kept animals to humans had so far only been documented in Danish mink farms. To avoid infecting pets, Reinking advised avoiding close contact with susceptible pets such as dogs or cats in the event of human infection. Vaccination of humans significantly reduces the probability of infection of pets.
Petition launched against animal killing in Hong Kong
Meanwhile, the government’s decision caused outrage in Hong Kong. According to the South China Morning Post newspaper, around 25,000 people have signed a petition that has so far unsuccessfully tried to stop the killing of animals. Pet shop owners sharply criticized the government’s actions.
Scientists, on the other hand, asked for understanding. It was quite possible that the corona virus could have been transmitted from humans to hamsters or among the animals themselves and then from hamsters back to humans. Since there wasn’t enough time to determine the genomic information, a quick decision was needed, Yuen Kwok-yung, a microbiologist at the University of Hong Kong, told the South China Morning Post.
Source From: Stern
