A review of the research literature by Purdue University researchers published in the journal. Animals highlights unanswered questions about the dynamics of the COVID-19 virus between dogs and humans. Credit: Purdue Agriculture Communications / Tom Campbell.
Early suspicions of dog resistance to the disease caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have given way to a long gap in clinical data as new variants of the virus emerge.
“It has not been confirmed that the virus can be transmitted from one dog to another dog or from dog to person,” said veterinarian Mohamed Kamel, a researcher at Purdue University.
In the early days of the pandemic, dogs appeared to be resistant to the coronavirus, with few signs of infection or transmission, said Mohit Verma, assistant professor of agricultural and biological engineering and the Weldon Purdue School of Biomedical Engineering. “As the virus evolves, or perhaps surveillance technologies, there are more cases of potentially asymptomatic dogs,” Verma said.
These are some of the findings that Kamel, Verma, and two co-authors summarized in a review of the research literature titled Human-Canine Interactions During the COVID-19 Pandemic. A summary with the latest updates and future perspectives has recently appeared in a special issue of the magazine. Animals on animal susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2.
Additional co-authors are Rachel Munds, Research Fellow at Krishi Inc. and Purdue Visiting Fellow in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, and Amr El-Sayed of the University of Cairo, Egypt.
Last June, the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service announced that it was providing up to $24 million for research related to SARS-CoV-2. Funding provided by the American Plan of Rescue Act focuses on the One Health concept, which recognizes the relationship between human, animal, and environmental health.
The SARS-CoV-2 virus, which originated in Wuhan, China, infected more than 600 million people worldwide in 2019 and claimed more than 6.5 million lives by October 2022.
“COVID-19 has become one of the most important economic, health and humanitarian issues of the 21st century,” the co-authors write in the journal. Animals article. Studies have documented the movement of the SARS-CoV-2 virus through various animal species, and about 75 percent of infectious diseases in humans begin in animals.
“This spread raises concerns that pets could serve as reservoirs for the virus,” the co-authors write.
More than two dozen animal species have been infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, from cats, dogs and rabbits to deer, cattle and gorillas. Before the outbreak of COVID-19, there were over 470 million dogs worldwide. Their susceptibility to the virus remains poorly understood because they are rarely tested, said Kamel, who is also a lecturer at Cairo University.
“Compared to cats or other animals, the susceptibility is less,” Kamel said. However, he warned that the dogs’ susceptibility to new variants may have changed to a greater or lesser extent.
A review of the research literature by researchers at Purdue University, published in the journal Animals, highlights unanswered questions about the dynamics of the COVID-19 virus between dogs and humans. Credit: Purdue Agriculture Communications / Tom Campbell.
“There are many options. It’s not just one virus,” Kamel said. “Infections differ from the old variant to the new variant.”
The apparent resistance of dogs to COVID-19 may be the result of their general low levels of angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE2), target receptors in their lung cells, and associated mutations.
“ACE2 is the main part of the attachment of the virus to cells,” said Kamel.
V Animals The journal article also discusses how the spread of the epidemic can be tracked, predicted, and contained using a combination of geographic information systems, molecular biology, and even detection dogs. Due to their heightened sense of smell, dogs can be trained to detect a wide range of human diseases, Kamel says. Using dogs to detect COVID-19 is quick and less expensive than other methods, which may require screening of large crowds of people, according to a journal article.
Verma’s startup, Krishi Inc., is already developing innovative paper-based tests with rapid results for bovine respiratory diseaseantimicrobial resistance and COVID-19. The test system uses a technique called loop-assisted isothermal amplification (LAMP) and is under development at Verma Labs for product safety applications. Adapting LAMP for testing SARS-CoV-2 in animals could be next.
V Animals the journal article cites numerous studies by Purdue and others supporting the usefulness of LAMP testing. So far Krishi’s focus has been developing an antimicrobial resistance test in animals, but the LAMP assay has broader potential, Verma said.
“If we want to make a wide-ranging observation, can we make our test universal for any species? LAMP is a portable device,” Verma said. “Because it can be done in a simple way and get results without setting up a lab, we can potentially do it on a larger scale and make it cost-effective.”
Currently available commercial home coronavirus tests for humans can also be used on dogs and cats. However, these tests may not be sensitive enough to detect lower viral loads in animals.
“They are not tested on animals, so we don’t know how well they will work. This is a gap that we hope to fill with the test we are developing, more advanced surveillance tools,” Verma said.
Information:
Mohamed S. Kamel et al., Human-Canine Interactions During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Latest Updates and Future Perspectives, Animals (2023). DOI: 10.3390/ani13030524
Contributed by Purdue University
quotes: Lack of data on COVID-19 in dogs raises ongoing concerns about dog-human interactions (20 March 2023), retrieved 21 March 2023 from https://phys.org/news/2023-03-lack-canine -covid-fuels-persisting. .html
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‘n“You can’t make plans for the poor,” says a young cop in this tense and painful pandemic drama from India. Filmed in black and white, it is set at the start of a government-imposed lockdown in May 2020 that has resulted in an exodus of 10 million migrant workers from India’s cities. A police officer has been placed in charge of a roadblock in the countryside to prevent poor workers from returning to their families and villages and prevent the spread of the virus. But realizing that help is not coming, the crowd, feeling hungry and abandoned, gets angry. The results are explosive, laying bare the fault lines of caste prejudice and class conflict.
Officer Surya (Rajkummar Rao) is himself from a low-caste family, but he climbs a ladder; he is a competent, decent cop who refuses kickbacks or bribes (just what modern police need). However, his boss never lets him forget his place and we see how Surya has also internalized prejudices. The whole society is at its checkpoint. A wealthy upper-caste woman (Dia Mirza) waltzes, accompanied by her charioteer, fully expecting to sail by. A young woman who worked as a maid in the city risks her life to bring her alcoholic father home to their village. An elderly security guard is on the bus; then a film crew from a news channel arrives.
Taking a scalpel to the caste system, director Anubhav Sinha shows how podcasts and other divisions stifle solidarity. Everyone at this checkpoint is blaming each other. A Hindu rants about a Muslim, accusing Muslims of spreading the virus. The situation is similar to a gasoline spill – waiting for a match to be struck, although, unfortunately, when it happens, after such a complicated and tough drama, everything ends up more like a hiss than an explosion.
A clash over climate protection measures threatens to unravel Germany’s three-party ruling alliance after the Green Party accused its liberal coalition partners of risking the country’s reputation by blocking an EU-wide phase-out of internal combustion engines in cars.
“There cannot be a coalition of progress in which only one party is responsible for progress, while others try to stop it,” Vice Chancellor and Economy Minister Robert Habek said at a meeting of the Green Party parliamentary faction. group in Weimar on Tuesday.
Last-minute opposition by Free Democratic Party (FDP) business supporters to EU plans to ban the sale of new combustion-engine cars from 2035, which European leaders hope to resolve at the Brussels summit on Thursday and Friday, has hurt Germany. standing in the block, Habek said. “We are losing the debate, our projects are getting too little support.”
The sudden rethinking of German liberals has sparked disappointment not only in the ranks of its coalition partners, but also in other European capitals, where there are fears that the continent’s largest economy, violating earlier agreements, will push other states to the same disorderly actions.
FDP politicians argue that the phase-out in its current form risks destroying the German manufacturing industry, which in the future could offer viable environmentally neutral fuels as an alternative to purely battery-powered electric vehicles.
“We in Germany are mastering combustion engine technology better than anyone else in the world,” FDP Transport Minister Volker Wissing said on German television Wednesday evening. “And it makes sense to keep this technology in our hands while some questions regarding climate-neutral mobility remain unanswered.”
In a proposed compromise, the European Commission reportedly proposed criteria for a new CO category.2– fuel-neutral vehicles that may remain on European roads after 2035. The Wissing Ministry of Transport has not yet officially responded to the proposal.
To the surprise of its members, the German Green Party has remained relatively low-key in the internal combustion engine debate — until this week, when Habeck’s intervention raised the temperature in Berlin’s power centers.
In a TV interview on Tuesday evening, the Minister for Economy and Climate Action also accused the FDP and its senior coalition partner, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), of deliberately leaking an early draft law banning new fossils. fuel heaters in Germany from 2025.
In a December 2021 coalition agreement, the three parties agreed to ban the installation of new fossil-fuel heaters from 2024, with only devices powered by 65% renewable energy being allowed thereafter. Since the war in Ukraine led to the collapse of gas supplies, this goal was supposed to be shifted to the beginning of 2024.
However, ever since the Habek ministry attempted to turn the policy into law, there has been a furious backlash over its cost to ordinary households, led by a massive tabloid picture.
Habek said the bill was leaked “in order to undermine the government’s credibility,” leading him to question the other parties’ willingness to reach a compromise at their scheduled meeting this Sunday.
The FDP and the Greens are struggling in the polls, with the Eco-Party currently close to the worse-than-expected 15% it won in the September 2021 federal election. Meanwhile, the Liberals hover just above the 5% threshold to enter parliament and have lost votes in a number of regional and state elections.
The National Audubon Society announced Wednesday that its board of directors voted to keep the organization’s name despite pressure to end its partnership with John James Audubon, a 19th-century naturalist and illustrator who enslaved people, prompting backlash from other groups. birds that have already changed their names.
The bird conservation group said its decision came after more than a year-long process that involved hundreds of its members, volunteers and donors. Despite Mr. Audubon’s history as an oppressor with racist views of blacks and indigenous people, Elizabeth Grey, executive director of the National Audubon Society, said in statements on Wednesday, the board of directors “decided that the organization went beyond the name of one person.”
She added that the Audubon name “has become a symbol of our mission and the significant accomplishments this organization has made over its long history.”
The decision to keep the name is at odds with a recent trend of social reckoning that has seen schools and streets renamed and statues removed to break associations with people with a racist past, including other bird conservation groups that have recently dropped Audubon from their names.
The National Audubon Society’s decision on Wednesday faced harsh criticism from other poultry groups across the country, including its Birds Union staff.
“Their decision to double down on honoring the white supremacist and continue to label our good work in his name is actively harming marginalized communities,” the Bird Union said in a statement Wednesday.
Union of Birds changed its name last month to disassociate himself from Mr. Audubon and urged the National Audubon Society to do the same.
“We will not elevate and glorify the man who today rejects and oppresses the members of our union,” the Bird Union said, announcing its new name. “Changing our name is a small step to demonstrate our commitment to anti-racism.”
A number of local chapters of the National Audubon Society have changed their names over the past couple of years, including those in Seattle and Chicago, as well as other groups around the country.
Lisa Alexander, executive director of Nature Forward, said her organization has made a decision October change its name from the Audubon Naturalist Society after a “deep study” of its name.
“We don’t really want to be associated with the John James Audubon story,” Ms Alexander said in an interview on Wednesday. “We felt the name change was a signal to our community that all people are welcome.”
The Board of Directors of the Seattle branch of the society unanimously adopted permission in July to drop Audubon from its name, with no timeline or ideas for a new name. Over the head websitethe name Audubon is crossed out under the word Seattle, next to an image of a green bird with a tassel in its beak.
The Seattle chapter said Tuesday it was “shocked, confused and deeply disappointed” by the national organization’s decision to keep the name.
“The name is a barrier set for historically isolated communities that are the first to and disproportionately affected by the impact of environmental disasters,” the Seattle Chapter said in a statement. “We choose differently. We choose the anti-racist path.”
A year before the name change, the Seattle chapter called on the National Audubon Society to begin an “inclusive and transparent process to remove John James Audubon” from their shared namesake.
The National Audubon Society, founded in 1905, was named after Mr. Audubon more than 50 years after his death. Mr. Audubon was famous for his wonderful illustrations of hundreds of birds. Some of them were simple but detailed, such as drawing from 1820 hermit thrush sitting on a branch. Others depict dramatic action, such as painting from 1829 an osprey clutching in its claws a weak fish flying through the air.
But, according to the National Audubon Society, in addition to his illustrations, Mr. Audubon also wrote about his opposition to the abolitionist movement.
After Britain passed the Slavery Abolition Act, which ended slavery in most of its colonies, Mr. Audubon wrote to his wife in 1834 that the British government “acted imprudently and too hastily”, according to National Audubon Society.
In a short story written by Mr. Audubon called “The Fugitive”, he talks about meeting a fugitive enslaved family in a swamp. After spending the night with them, Mr. Audubon said he took them back to the man they had fled from so they could be enslaved again. It is not clear if this story was true or fiction. McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture in Knoxville, Tennessee.
“We must acknowledge that his work has been a catalyst for bird conservation in this country,” said Ms. Alexander. “He painted beautiful pictures of birds, and this attracted many people to the desire to protect the birds.”
“But he was also an enslaver and a known white supremacist,” she added.
