Pet owners ‘are infecting their cats and dogs with COVID-19’

Owners, who are infected with COVID-19, can pass the deadly virus on their pet cats and dogs, revealed the latest study.

Researchers at Utrecht University in the Netherlands studied 310 pets – 156 dogs and 154 cats – across 196 households where owners had tested positive for the infection.

The findings of the study, which is yet to be published, show that six cats and seven dogs had positive PCR tests while antibodies were found in 31 cats and 23 dogs.

"If you have COVID-19, you should avoid contact with your cat or dog, just as you would do with other people," said Els Broens, from Utrecht University.

"The main concern, however, is not the animals' health -- they had no or mild symptoms of COVID-19 -- but the potential risk that pets could act as a reservoir of the virus and reintroduce it into the human population," Broens said in a statement.

The researchers say the most likely route of virus transmission is from human to animal, suggesting the virus was not being passed between pets living in close contact with one another.

Dr Broens said, "We can't say there is a 0% risk of owners catching COVID from their pets.

"At the moment, the pandemic is still being driven by human-to-human infections, so we just wouldn't detect it."

The research shows that the novel coronavirus is highly prevalent in pets of people who have had the infection.

The study was presented at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases held online this year due to the pandemic.

"Fortunately, to date no pet-to-human transmission has been reported. So, despite the rather high prevalence among pets from COVID-19 positive households in this study, it seems unlikely that pets play a role in the pandemic," Broens added.