Report: Cats contract coronavirus, then shed the virus particles

Cats can infect each other with the novel coronavirus, but they may not have any symptoms, researchers reported on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The report follows earlier laboratory research and cases of domestic cats, as well as tigers andlions atthe Bronx Zoo, that tested positive for the coronavirus. In several cases, those cats showed mild symptoms, but the six cats in the new experiment didn’t get sick at all and cleared the virus from their bodies on their own.

Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine and Peter Halfmann of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, along with other researchers from both the United States and Japan, conducted the study, in which three domestic cats were inoculated with the virus and three additional uninfected cats were put in cages, one with each of the inoculated cats.

First the cats that had been given the virus tested positive. Then their cage mates also caught the virus. None were sick, and all were virus-free after, at most, six days.

Cats have also contracted the virus from humans, but there are no reports of a person becoming infected with the virus from a cat, although the authors suggest that the possibility deserves more research.

The cats, once infected, shed virus particles in the same way that humans do. And it is the same coronavirus that infects people. That makes it theoretically possible for cats to give the virus to humans.