Cats can transmit the new coronavirus to each other, while dogs can not, according to a new US scientific study, according to which neither species of pets appears to transmit the virus to humans.
New study confirms previous research findings that both cats and dogs can be infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19 disease in humans. But neither cats nor dogs seem likely to get sick.
Cats also develop a strong immune response - compared to other animals - to the coronavirus, which could make them the subject of human vaccine studies.
Researchers at the Colorado State University College of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences conducted the new experiments and published them in the journal National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), according to the New York Times, animals are not a major source of concern for human infection. As they said, it is no coincidence that while more than one million people have died from the coronavirus and tens of millions have been diagnosed, the reports of infected animals are counted on the fingers.
The researchers advised cat owners to keep them indoors as long as they could, especially if someone in the family has been infected with the coronavirus so that other cats do not become infected.