Guelph researchers studying COVID-19 risk for pets

GUELPH — Pets of people infected with COVID-19 are being recruited for a Guelph study to better understand the risk to animals sharing those homes.

Researchers at the University of Guelph’s Ontario Veterinary College are testing the cats, dogs and ferrets of people who are sick to find out if the animals are positive in order to discover how common or rare it is for pets to become infected.

“This will help us figure out, is there an animal side to worry about?” said Prof. Scott Weese, who is doing the study with fellow pathobiology department professor Dorothee Bienzle.

“There’s some risk. We don’t know what it is.”

The study will also look for factors that contribute to pets becoming infected and which households are at a highest risk of having human COVID-19 infections spread to pets.

Sporadic reports have been made of animals testing positive for the new virus, including at least two dogs in Hong Kong and another in the United States, two tigers and a lion in the New York City area and cats in Europe.

While the numbers are low, the flip side is that very few animals have been tested — meaning the likelihood of animals picking up the virus isn’t known.

“We really have no idea,” Weese said. “Ideally it’s low, but we’ll see.”

The researchers are recruiting cats, dogs and ferrets for the study.

Cats can get sick, typically mildly, and dogs seem less likely to become sick, but it’s not known if that’s because they get infected less often or they don’t develop symptoms. Ferrets are also included because the animal is highly susceptible to respiratory viruses.

The researchers are looking for homes where at least one person has symptoms consistent with COVID-19 or tested positive.

Gathering the samples is a high-risk and time-consuming endeavour, since researchers go into the homes of someone who is sick and need to suit up with personal protective gear.

“It really is a slow process,” Weese said.

They’re collecting nasal, throat and rectal swab samples from the pets, along with a swab of the fur where pets are most likely to be petted. That list can be narrowed later if some prove to be more helpful than others when looking for signs of the virus.

“We collect the series of them to be sure we’re getting as much information as we can get,” Weese said.

Sampling started this week, with about 20 animals being tested so far including in the Kitchener-Waterloo area. The aim is to recruit several dozen more.

The swabs will be tested in the same way it’s done for humans, looking for pets that are positive as well as comparing the samples to the coronavirus strains circulating among humans.

Maybe certain strains are more likely to infect pets.

This is just the first study to get an idea of how often humans infect pets with COVID-19, with many areas left to be explored.

Down the road, the researchers would like to do antibody testing, which will reveal if a pet was infected without the issues of timing and safety that comes with swab testing.

“You start putting the puzzle together with a variety of studies,” Weese said.