These are crazy times. With the internet and instant news sources, we are looking at unprecedented dissemination of information, advisories, and orders from all levels of the health world. Without these, death rates from epidemics like the Flu of 1918 would likely still recur. Fortunately, an informed population can be a safer. Unfortunately, the information being disseminated isn’t always correct and can lead to people making poor decisions out of fear. We are seeing this in the veterinary field with mis-information about COVID-19 and pets.
The moment the first dog tested positive for COVID-19, I knew the headlines would be all over the spectrum. Sure enough, we saw lackadaisical articles saying it was just test-contamination right up through YOUR DOG CAN KILL YOU! stories. Here is the reality.
Viruses are constantly invading our bodies. As we walk through life, we are touching surfaces and sucking in air that is loaded with them. For the most part, our bodies recognize these invaders as foreign and our immune system wipes them our before they can do anything. Many of them are from other species and wouldn’t have done anything to us anyway. They would be like inhaling dust particles. So far, that seems to be the case in pets exposed to COVID-19. The first dog to test positive lived in a small apartment with two infected people in Hong Kong. These folks were sneezing and spraying their Coronovirus into the air where their dog was breathing it in. Unfortunately, the swabs for this virus cannot tell us if a patient is infected, just that genetic material of the virus in in the nasal tissue. This one dog never developed any signs of COVID-19 infection during its quarantine and it is currently assumed that this was just exposure. There is also a cat in Belgium which tested positive for the virus in the vomit and feces, though it was not concluded that this virus was an active infection either. At the time this article was written, these are the only two domestic animals found to have COVID-19 DNA in their bodies and neither were deemed to be contagious to humans. Thus far, it just seems to be getting into them from their owners. Hopefully, it will continue to be a disease that does not make them sick. That said, H1N1 flu virus did, in fact, start making some dogs ill. So, we are watching this closely.
So, what are we doing on the veterinary side of things? Well, until we are definitively told that the virus can’t be transmitted to people from the saliva and nasal secretions of exposed dogs, we are treating it like it is. This means that, if a dog is in a home with someone that may be infected, we assume that they could pass this through direct contact if they were just in the car with the owner. That means no more kisses from our patients and continual personal protection and disinfection. However, since the virus doesn’t seem to reproduce in our patients, we are NOT treating them as if they are contagious with regards to the distancing and needs for major protective gear. We are reserving those for the human health professionals on the front lines.