Woof! Not To Worry

"I get so many questions about this issue."

"Will there be a vaccine? When will there be a vaccine?"

Dr.Elizabeth Lennon, veterinarian, University of Pennsylvania 

"It doesn't look like cats or dogs would ever be a reservoir for this virus."

"We believe that if there weren't sick people around them, they would not be able to continue spreading it from animal to animal -- it would not continue to exist in their population."

"The best way to prevent SARS-CoV-2 in our pets is to prevent the disease in people."

"So please get vaccinated."

Dr.Jeanette O'Quin, veterinarian, Ohio State University

Science

 

Jaguars are being inoculated against COVID-19, so are bonobos, orangutans and otters, ferrets and fruit bars, at various zoos in the past year, as cases have erupted among them. Billions of people worldwide are now vaccinated against COVID-19, with billions more yet to go. The global medical community and government agencies are working around the clock to ensure that as many populations become inoculated against infections by the coronavirus as possible to present a united front against a frequently-deadly pathogen.

Cat or dog vaccines have been developed; those initial vaccines were then deployed to vaccinate zoo animals. But the issue of having a vaccine against COVID available for household pets appears for the time being and perhaps for the foreseeable future, a dead issue, so to speak. Not so much to ignore a need, or to leave the impression that dearly beloved household companion pets are no one's concern, but because experience has shown that though cats (more so than dogs) and dogs can acquire the infection, they readily rise above it.

Simply put: not a priority. Household pets display few symptoms of COVID, some, like their human counterparts, are asymptomatic and most cases are very mild. When at first it was imagined that a pet pandemic could arise, the possibility of developing a dog/cat-specific vaccine appealed to Zoetis, a veterinary pharmaceutical company in New Jersey, and work began on producing a vaccine candidate. There were, in fact, four promising candidates by fall of 2020.

And then it became obvious to researchers that after all, the issue of pets being infected would not be likely to pose a serious threat to either animals or people. One study of 76 pets living with people who had developed COVID saw 17.6 percent of cats and 1.7 percent of dogs testing positive for COVID and 82.4 percent of the infected pets showed no symptoms.

The most common effect on pets infected with the virus are fairly mild symptoms including lethargy, coughing, sneezing, runny noses or diarrhea. Typically the infected pet makes a full recovery without the need of any treatment. Nor is there strong evidence that cats or dogs may spread the virus to humans. All these factors convinced experts a vaccine for pets was unnecessary.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture which regulates veterinary medicine in the US, announced in November of 2020 that it would not accept applications for cat or dog vaccines "because data do not indicate such a vaccine would have value". At the same time the possibility is not discounted that at some future date it is possible that changes in the virus could mandate that a pet vaccine be given wide use.