{"id":5412,"date":"2020-03-30T01:02:07","date_gmt":"2020-03-30T01:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/?p=5412"},"modified":"2020-03-30T01:02:13","modified_gmt":"2020-03-30T01:02:13","slug":"first-case-of-human-to-cat-transmission-of-covid-19-reported-in-belgium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/first-case-of-human-to-cat-transmission-of-covid-19-reported-in-belgium\/","title":{"rendered":"First case of human-to-cat transmission of Covid-19 reported in Belgium"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Even as many people still can&#8217;t access Covid-19 testing, one domestic cat in Belgium has been tested and &#8211; unfortunately &#8211; found to have been infected with the disease caused by the new coronavirus that&#8217;s spreading across the globe. This was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.brusselstimes.com\/all-news\/belgium-all-news\/103003\/coronavirus-belgian-woman-infected-her-cat\/\">reported<\/a> by the Begian government&#8217;s FPS Public Health, Food Chain Safety and Environment.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is the first human-to-cat transmission of the\u00a0novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The owner of the cat traveled to Italy, a country with over 97,600 Covid-19 cases and 10,700 deaths as of March 30. Upon returning to Belgium, this owner got sick with Covid-19. The symptoms linked to the disease were also noted in the cat, including: diarrhea, vomiting and respiratory issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The owner sent samples of the cat&#8217;s vomit and feces to Dr. Daniel Desmecht&#8217;s lab at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of Li\u00e8ge. Genetic tests showed high levels of SARS-CoV-2 (which causes Covid-19) in those samples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Two other pets (dogs, this time) are thought to have been infected with the novel coronavirus from owners in Hong Kong. The first dog is a 17-year-old Pomeranian, which tested a weak positive for the virus at the end of February. It died in mid-March.\u00a0The second dog, a German shepherd, tested positive but showed no symptoms of the disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This shows that, yes, pets can get infected too; and this time, the humans are the vectors. But it is worth noting that so far, there is\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.brusselstimes.com\/all-news\/belgium-all-news\/102266\/no-evidence-that-your-pet-can-give-you-coronavirus\/\">no evidence<\/a>\u00a0that the virus can be transmitted from pets to humans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Kitty, by the way, recovered after nine days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Even as many people still can&#8217;t access Covid-19 testing, one domestic cat in Belgium has been tested and &#8211; unfortunately &#8211; found to have been infected with the disease caused by the new coronavirus that&#8217;s spreading across the globe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5413,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[2296,2294,1086,1152,1088,283],"class_list":["post-5412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsmakers","category-spotlight","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-pet","tag-pet-care","tag-pet-health","tag-pets"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5412"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5414,"href":"https:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5412\/revisions\/5414"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}