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As COVID-19 keeps people at home under quarantine, many have wondered how susceptible their canine and feline companions are to the disease Scientists now report that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, doesn’t do a good job of copying itself in dogs, pigs, chickens, and ducks But cats are susceptible to the virus and can give it to one another via airborne transmission The researchers did not study whether cats could pass the virus to people Led by Hualan Chen and Zhigao Bu, of the Harbin Veterinary Research Institute, and Guizhen Wu, of China’s National Institute for Viral Disease Control and Prevention, the team also found that ferrets—animals commonly used to study viruses that cause human respiratory infections—can also get SARS-CoV-2 In ferrets, though, the virus reproduces itself only in the upper respiratory tract, not in the lungs The findings could mean that ferrets aren’t great for models for replicating
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