It’s common for pets to acquire COVID-19 from owners who are sick with the infection, scientists have found.
And sometimes the animals become sick, too, Scientific American reports.
Two studies presented at the 2021 European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases looked at the issue. The research has not yet been published in an academic journal.
One study came from the University of Guelph in Ontario and involved 198 cats and 54 dogs. The researchers found that “two out of three cats and two out of five dogs whose owners had COVID had antibodies against SARS-CoV-2,” according to Scientific American.
The other study was led by a scientist at the Utrecht University in the Netherlands and included 156 dogs and 154 cats from households with human COVID-19 patients. According to Scientific American, “animals in one in five of these households had become infected with the virus.”
“The findings are consistent: it’s just not that hard for these animals to get infected,” said veterinary epidemiologist Sarah Hamer, who is working on similar research at Texas A&M University.
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