How you can prevent pets becoming infected

WE’VE long known that some animals – including lions, tigers, and the cats with whom we share our homes – can catch the novel corona- virus, so it shouldn’t come as a sur- prise that a case has been detected in the UK. But don’t let the mews scare you. Despite more than 16 million human cases worldwide, only a handful of cats have tested positive, and there’s no evidence that companion animals can transmit the virus to humans.

There’s no need to treat your animal companions any differently from usual, although a few simple measures will help keep everybody safe.

The animals you live with are members of your household, and social distancing rules apply to them, too: for example, avoid letting your dog run up to strangers in the park. An infected person who strokes your cat or dog can leave the virus in their fur in the same way that they can contaminate a door handle, another human hand, or any other surface. If you aren’t shaking someone’s hand, that person shouldn’t be stroking your cat or dog, either.

If you’re self-isolating with Covid19 symptoms, don’t just limit your contact with human family members. Extend that courtesy to your animal companions, too – while still making sure they are properly cared for – to protect them from becoming infected.

Samantha Saunders, Research Associate,

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

Evidence points to us wearing masks

WITH reference to the contentious issue of the usefulness of face masks in combating the ongoing respiratory corona viral pandemic, the reliance of Wales First Minister Mark Drakeford on the advice of Dr Frank Atherton, Chief Medical Officer for Wales, is becoming more dubious. While the available evidence for their efficacy has been variously dismissed as weak, marginal and evolving, the validity of the countervailing presumptive behavioural evidence and status quo view concerning the hypothetical false sense of personal safety that perhaps may be engendered by mask-wearers, is itself highly questionable.

The known infective transmission route by coughs, sneezes and pulmonary exhalation surely provides a strong indication of the value of face coverings in augmenting the prevention and spread of the viral particle aerosol load to others, even if less efficacious in partially protecting the wearer.

Obviously the ideal gold standard definitive proof of a double blind experimental control trial on the topic is unattainable for both practical and ethical considerations. However, the burgeoning variety and strength of scientific, medical and socio-political evidence now adds to the plausibility that the recommended public health advice on the use of masks indoors should be reversed as a matter of demonstrable clarity and urgency.

Peter Evans

Chepstow

UK voting system needs an overhaul

MOST of those polled are right to blame the Government as a whole for mismanagement of the pandemic as Gove, aided by Cummings, is really in charge.

Johnson was picked by his party as a more likely winner despite having been our worst-ever Foreign Secretary. Now he is our worst-ever Prime Minister he rightly has to take the flak for the monumental bungling that has proved so costly to lives and livelihoods.

In place of a government of all the talents we should have had when May lost her snap election we have a government of no talent whatsoever, with Brexit as their only raison d’être.

No other European country would allow a single referendum won on a simple majority after a Leave campaign funded by billionaire overspending, which has never been properly investigated, to so damage our unwritten constitution.

Now these same Leave campaigners are at the heart of government making a monumental mess of negotiations despite Gove’s original reassurances that we would remain in the single market, with no disruption to trading with our nearest neighbours, he now scrambles to turn a sizeable chunk of the Garden of England into a giant lorry park.

Failure to reform our first-pastthe-post voting system and our oligarchic constitution has allowed our right-wing press to hand Johnson his 80-seat majority, which translates into even more inefficient privatisation of health and less right to justice.

Now we know who really has taken back control and it’s certainly not the people.

Margaret Phelps

Penarth

It’s just worthless words from Boris

BORIS Johnson is asking the country to donate to the Conservatives to help them win the next election, yet his Government never had a plan to save lives due to Covid-19.

We have had up to 65,000 deaths, leaving families to a life of pain and heartache, of which 25,000 were preventable. He hasn’t got a plan for an economic recovery and treats our front-line workers with total disrespect.

Remember the Conservatives in 2009 telling the country they were going to end the inhumane robbing of the former Allied Steel and Wire (ASW) steelworkers pensions, an indefensible lie.

Boris Johnson promised to end this unfairness to families when Prime Minister. Yet when asked to intervene and end this ASW pension injustice, he and his ministers as usual just ignored these families, to their shame. Nothing changes, just fine and worthless words.

John Benson

Dinas Powys

If you aren’t shaking someone’s hand, that person shouldn’t be stroking your cat or dog Samantha Saunders

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