Cats and dogs might need to receive the coronavirus vaccine "to curb the spread of the infection," a group of scientific experts wrote in an editorial for the peer-reviewed medical journal Virulence.
"It is not unthinkable that vaccination of some domesticated animal species might . . . be necessary to curb the spread of the infection," wrote the researchers from the University of East Anglia, research facility the Earlham Institute, and University of Minnesota.
Denmark ordered the culling of millions of mink after they were linked to hundreds of coronavirus cases in the country.
UEA professor of evolutionary genetics Cock van Oosterhout, one of the authors of the editorial, told the U.K.'s Independent, "it makes sense to develop vaccines for pets, for domestic animals, just as a precaution to reduce this risk."
He continued, "What we need to be as a human society, we really need to be prepared for any eventuality when it comes to COVID. I think the best way to do this is indeed consider development of vaccines for animals as well. Interestingly the Russians have already started to develop a vaccine for pets, which there's very little information about."
The editor-in-chief of Virulence, Kevin Tyler, added, "Cats are asymptomatic, but they are infected by it, and they can infect humans with it.
"The risk is that, as long as there are these reservoirs, that it starts to pass as it did in the mink from animal to animal, and then starts to evolve animal-specific strains, but then they spill back into the human population, and you end up essentially with a new virus which is related which causes the whole thing all over again."
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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