The order includes pets that were bought days before Christmas be handed over, with a warning not to “kiss or abandon them on the street” as Hong Kong and mainland China attempt to sustain a zero Covid strategy, attempting to suppress all outbreaks internally while maintaining tight border controls with the outside world.
From giraffes to snow leopards, gorillas to sea lions, zoos around the world have been inoculating their animals with an experimental Covid vaccine as an insurance policy against what they fear could be a similarly fatal illness for certain mammals.
It is not the first time that pets have tested positive for the virus: the same laboratory detected coronavirus in a cat last year, while research from the Netherlands has previously suggested that the virus is common in cats and dogs owned by people who have Covid.
Vet experts have warned pet owners with symptoms to stay away from their animals in case they infect them too (Picture: Reuters)‘While eligible participant number was limited by relatively low human transmission rates in the study area, these preliminary results suggest that a substantial proportion of pets in households of persons with Covid-19 end up developing antibodies,’ added Professor Bienzle.
The team, at Harbin Veterinary Research Institute in China, found that cats are highly susceptible to Covid-19 and appear to be able to transmit the virus through respiratory droplets to other cats.Experts said the findings were credible, but that they did not indicate cats were an important vector in spreading the disease between humans.