Dog Tested Positive For Coronavirus

May 5, 2020

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the risk for animals spreading COVID-19 to people are low but the agency now says it appears that it can be spread from people to animals in some situations.

The CDC said that was the case for a family in North Carolina, whose pug tested positive for coronavirus.

“This has been very stressful, and we’re grateful we made it through,” said Dr. Heather McLean a pediatrician at Duke.

Back in March Dr. McLean and all her family, except for her daughter, tested positive for COVID-19.

“We’ve all recovered. We’ve felt great for the last two weeks. Everything seems very back to normal,” said Dr. Heather McLean.

The family joined a study that was being conducted by Duke.

“They all came out to our house and did blood samples. For the humans, they swabbed our noses as well as our mouths, and then for the animals they did oral swabs for both dogs and the cat,” Dr. Heather McLean said.

The study showed that the family’s dog, Winston, contracted the virus.

Researchers told WRAL to their knowledge, this is the first instance in which the coronavirus has been detected in a dog.

Dr. McLean said, “his symptoms were mild. Pugs are a little unusual in that they cough and sneeze in a very strange way. So it almost seems like he was very gaggy, and there was one day when he didn’t want to eat his breakfast, and if you know pugs you know they love to eat, so that seemed very unusual.”

Winston is doing much better and was only sick for a few days.

“Hopefully we’ll learn more through the research study, and I think because there’s not a lot of studies and sampling pets, we just don’t know yet. My advice is just not to get too worried about it,” she said.

The CDC said to treat pets as you would other human family members, do not let pets interact with people or animals outside the household.

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