Protecting Yout and Your Pets from COVID

AUSTIN, Texas - Jan. 14, 2021 - PRLog -- The coronavirus pandemic upended our lives throughout 2020, with many of us spending significantly more time at home. As a result, during this year of isolation, many of us turn to our "fur babies" for emotional companionship and stress reduction.

Indeed, the unexpected cameo appearances of cats and dogs walking into live video shots over the past year livened up many otherwise mundane Zoom conference calls or television news programs broadcast live from a reporter's bedroom.

Perhaps unsurprisingly – given the recent shortages of toilet paper, baking flour, and other household items – there were even spot shortages of cats and dogs available for adoption during 2020, with some perspective pet owners bidding up the price of purebred puppies and kittens to record heights. (FWIW, we recommend adopting from your local shelter if you can.)

Assessing The Risk Of Covid With Pets In The Household

Whether you are a longtime pet owner or have recently adopted a Christmas puppy or a New Year kitten, you may be wondering about health and safety issues vis-à-vis pets and the Coronavirus.

Important questions to ask include:

• Can I give Covid to my pet?
• Can my pet get Covid?
• Could my pet transmit Covid to me?

All these questions are based on very reasonable concerns – given that SARS-CoV-2 (as Covid-19 is formally known) is a disease of zoonotic origin (meaning the virus has crossed between species) that most likely originated in bats and from there possibly passed onto pangolins before transferring to humans.

Another reason for concern is we treat our pets like family; it's not uncommon for kids and adults alike to stroke a cat's fur as it sits in our lap, or to let a pet dog lick our face, or allow them to sleep in the family bed at night.

But the recent culling of millions of mink raised for the fur trade in Denmark (suspected of harboring a potentially dangerous new variant of Covid-19) is a wake-up call for us to revisit whether close contact with our pets is safe and how we can protect ourselves (and them!) from transferring the virus.

What We Know About Covid Transmission On Surfaces

During the spring of 2020, when coronavirus cases first began to surge, there was an understandably high level of anxiety about keeping all touchable surfaces clean to prevent transferring the virus from one person to another.

Read more...https://formaspace.com/articles/wet-lab/protecting-you-an...