Going Viral

By Amy Fernandez

It’s hard to process the alarming facts about COVID-19 that are piling up by the minute. Jeeezzz…at least when the Black Death ran wild there wasn’t a non-stop news cycle.  Okay, never mind what went on in 1400. Here’s the thing.

Like me, you are probably obsessed with those cryptic reports from Hong Kong about possible human to dog transmission of COVID-19. The fear factor ramped up alarmingly after “Patient Zero”, the 17 year-old Parti-Pom,  died three days after being returned to its owner.

Hot on the heels of that horrifying tidbit, we learned that two more dogs owned by Hong Kong residents had been quarantined, one of which also showed “weak positive” lab results.

We have enough on our plate at the moment so before we jump to conclusions let’s look at it from a dog breeder perspective (and if we ran the world….). Anyway, realistic and practical are toolkit essentials for anyone devoted to purebred improvement.  We are also impervious to panic.

The poor little ancient Pom that triggered this firestorm was tested, retested, screened, quarantined, and everything else.  It was not released to its owner until experts worldwide concurred that it could not transmit the virus. From the perspective of someone living with ancient dogs, I suspect that its already fragile health crashed from the stress of that ordeal.

But then, right around the same time we learned that a two year-old German Shepherd and a four year-old mixed breed, also in Hong Kong, had also been quarantined after their owners were diagnosed with COVID-19.

Keep in mind that none of these dogs, including the one that later died, ever showed any clinical symptoms of coronavirus.  They were tested simply because researchers are attempting to get a handle on exactly what we’re dealing with here. Zoonotic viruses, those capable of infecting multiple species, are extremely rare. And they gotta go through about 50 billion mutations to get that way.  For instance, according to conservative estimates, rabies virus has been around since at least 3000 BC. COVID-19, on the other hand, is a very new pathogen. A lethal one for sure, but still relatively stupid.

Viruses replicate and evolve constantly.  That’s the modus operandi of these delightful little bundles of protein and nucleic acid. And constant surveillance is the byword of flu virus research. That is how epidemiologists initially discovered that this one had mutated into something transmissible from human to human.

Which is what we’re dealing with at the moment. But there’s no reason to think it’s done with its little flu reinventions. Quite possibly it’s working on a human to dog strain. However, if that’s what this is, it’s a nonstarter–noninfectious and incapable of causing illness. Neither dog displayed any clinical symptoms.

The fact that these two dogs carried it was only discovered because modern research capabilities make it easy to quickly isolate and sequence viral mutations.

Hong Kong was an early hot zone and one of the few places that actually seems to have a lid on this nightmare at the moment. Partly, this is because they know the drill and have an excellent response mechanism in place.  And part of that protocol is to quarantine pets belonging to infected owners. Just to keep tabs on possible new mutated strains that might emerge. They’ve actually got several pets under observation at the moment, but only those two dogs have tested positive. And, like I said, both remained asymptomatic.

That brings me to the final point, the “weak positive” test results.

You might say that’s the real issue–how to interpret “weak positive” testing results. It can mean a lot of things, or nothing. We know that COVID-19 is transmitted through respiratory particulates and evidence suggests that it remains viable on surfaces for at least three hours. So, it is quite possible that in these cases it was transmitted to pets via the usual close pet/owner contact. But interspecies transmission is a whole different ballgame from human to human contagion. Jumping the species barrier requires a completely new make and model. And so far, this one is a dud.

So, here’s my sensible dog breeder advice. Shut the laptop, click off the screen or whatever happens to be your media poison of choice, and spend some time hugging and kissing on your germ-laden dogs. You will feel a lot better.

Short URL: https://caninechronicle.com/?p=181656

Posted by chesliepickett on Apr 6 2020. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.