700 swab samples sent to IVRI, 5 lions test +ve

The Indian Veterinary Research Institute (IVRI) in Bareilly has received about 700 swab samples of wild animals since March 2020, of which only five samples of lions tested positive for Covid-19, officials at the institute said on Wednesday. The genome sequencing was being done to find out how the animals contracted Covid, they added.

All the positive cases were from this year. Since May this year, 250 samples have been processed at the lab. The first sample to test positive was of a lion at Etawah Safari Park in the first week of May, followed by another big cat in Hyderabad zoo a few days later. This led to a jump in the number of samples sent for testing.

“We began receiving samples from almost every zoo in the

LUCKNOW:

country where a big cat is kept. From wildlife reserves, too, officials collected samples and sent them to our lab,” said KP Singh, joint director at the Centre for Animal Disease Research and Diagnostic (CADRAD) at IVRI.

Singh leads the animal diagnostics wing of IVRI, which houses a BSL-3 (biosafety level) facility where these samples are tested. He said a team of five scientists was looking for the Covid-19 genome to determine if the lions got the virus from humans or some other source. The institute got 250 samples of lions, leopards, elephants, civet cats, hyenas, and domestic cattle from various parts of the country since May.

In the first week of June, three more lions tested Covid-positive at the Chennai zoo. As all positive samples are of zoo lions, experts at CADRAD suspect they were infected by humans.