Can animals give you COVID?
At the onset of the pandemic, scientists speculated that the novel virus first infected humans via cross-species transmission from a bat.
It’s believed that bats were the source as they carry various types of coronaviruses similar to the SARS-CoV-2 genome.
While it’s unclear if they’re to blame for the pandemic that has made face masks and social distancing the new normal, it may not be the only instance of an animal infecting a human with the virus.
Yahoo reports that minks can also transmit COVID to humans.
According to an August 17 report from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), COVID-postive minks were discovered on two separate farms in Utah.
This follows the outbreak in the Netherlands in June where mink farms found COVID-positive cases linked to a mink farm in Spain.
After a worker on one of the farms tested positive, a paper published in Eurosurveillance said the person was likely infected from the animals.
"We definitely need to be concerned with the potential for domesticated animals that are infected to pass on their infection to us," Richard Ostfeld, a researcher at New York's Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies, told The Washington Times.
Since there has not been any mink-to-human transmission in the U.S., the USDA hasn’t called the animals a threat.
“There is currently no evidence that animals, including mink, play a significant role in spreading the virus to humans," the USDA notes, adding that any animal-to-human transmission is “considered to be low.”
While researchers don’t believe that minks cause a more severe form of illness in humans, they are concerned that the virus may mutate, which would make the progress towards a vaccine less effective.
Other animals have tested positive for COVID, but there is no indication that they can pass on the virus to humans.
Related
The first case of an animal testing positive came from five tigers and three lions at a zoo in New York City in April.
Paul Calle, chief veterinarian for the Bronx Zoo, said that it was the first time a wild animal got sick from a person, who was likely an asymptomatic zookeeper.
Household pets like dogs and cats have contracted coronavirus from their humans on occasion, but the CDC notes that there are no cases of humans contracting them from their furry pets.
And household family pets like hamsters have for long been known to contract SARS, but now a study conducted in Hong Kong found they can easily contract COVID and even display similar symptoms to humans.
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