COVID-19 and pets – the facts

Thank you so much for joining us for the first pet parent webinar in the PetSure’s paw and learn series.

I’m Danny Houlihan, chief veterinary officer at PetSure and I’m your host and moderator for today’s session.

Tonight’s webinar on Covid 19 and pets is brought to you by PetSure and Dr Michael Linton.

PetSure is a company of animal lovers, providing a sense of security to pet parents through pet insurance. PetSure powers the pet insurance propositions of many well-known brands including Woolworths, RSPCA, and many others.

Additionally, PetSure has revolutionised the claim experience with the development of GapOnly. If you’d like to find out more about PetSure or GapOnly, please visit our website.

Before we begin, I’d like to run you through some housekeeping items, the webinar will run for 45 minutes followed by a question-and-answer session.

On the screen, you should see a control panel to your right. If you experience any problems during the webinar, please submit your issue within the question panel, and we’ll try and resolve it for you.

During the webinar, all phone lines will be muted to reduce background noise. If you have a question for the presenters, please post your question in the question panel.

The speaker for tonight’s webinar is Dr Michael Linton. Michael is a recognized feline medicine specialist and has worked in both referral and general practice since graduating in 2006.

He received qualifications as a feline medicine specialist in 2018. As part of his training, he undertook an original research project on a unique disease, known as feline gastrointestinal explosion fibre aplasia and has become a world leader on the subject.

He’s passionate about all things gastroenterology, so without further delay, I’d like to hand you over to dr. Linton.

Thank you so much Dr Houlihan, and for that lovely introduction, and thank you to all the armed attendees for coming along.

So as we all know in December of 2019, the world seemed to change a little bit for all of us human cases of Neva pneumonia of an unknown origin were reported in Wuhan City, a Province in China.

Shortly after a new coronavirus was identified as the causative agent are there Chinese authorities? Since then, human cases have been reported almost in all countries of the world, and it’s been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization.

It’s led to a disproportionate amount of deaths in some regions. In addition, we’re now starting to see some further impacts of the disease such as the collapse of some of the world economies third.

To get a bit of a better understanding about coronavirus we need to actually have an understanding about what a virus is in the first place, so virus is a sub-microscopic infectious agent that replicates on the inside of all living cells of an organism.

They made up a sonic called DNA or RNA with coronavirus, this is actually made up of RNA and so mainly I’ll be referring to RNA viruses once the Biron penetrates the host all of a human or an animal the viral genome is unpacked, leading to a hijacking of the host cells division machinery and when infected. When infected, a host cell is forced to rapidly produce thousands of identical copies of the original virus.

Then if you look at specifically what is coronavirus. Coronaviruses are quite common in animals and humans the origin of the term corona actually means Latin for crown, and it’s derived from the plasma or aura that surrounds the song of the stars, so you can actually see here, below my mouse, that this is electron microscopy of coronavirus and it’s got this little aura around the time around the envelope giving it its…its name.

There lies the roughly spherical and it consists of something called a viral envelope, which is around here, which has a whole lot of important proteins stuck in the viral envelope wall.

Probably the most important protein that you might be hearing about every now and then is something called the S protein the spike protein, and this allows fusion between the virus and the host cell, essentially allowing the virus to actually gain access to the host door.

So it’s important to know that when we’re talking about coronavirus, that or Covid 19 that we realize that it’s actually part of a big family of coronaviruses and so it’s really, and that’s quite important to understand because when you take your…your pets to the vet, for example, there’s a chance that your bets are going to diagnose your pet with coronavirus and it’s very important to realize that that does not necessarily mean that your animal actually has Covid 19 so what it is…is the coronaviruses as a whole family I divided it into a number of different genesis for the alpha beta gamma and delta coronaviruses
So for example in dogs, there were two known types of coronaviruses. There’s the canine coronavirus, which is the member of the Alpha family of coronavirus. And it’s a canine respiratory drone virus, which is a member of the beader family of drone viruses.

And ultimately all these different viruses are related to each other in some way or another.

So when we’re talking about Covid-19 we’re actually referring to a member of the beta coronavirus group, and this coronavirus has been labelled sized clover – which stands for to be acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus tube.

You’ll hear the defence SARS Covid 2 and Covid-19, and these two terms are often used interchangeably, they don’t exactly mean the same thing essentially Covid-19 is the syndrome as SARS Covid – so I guess for me it’s analogous with a safe example the HIV virus causing the serum of aids.

I won’t go into this too much because I’ve touched on it before, but again, how does coronavirus infect itself? What it does the bonds onto the…the walls of the host cell onto special receptors, and these special receptors are something called ace 2 receptors, which are and this is quite important, because really it seems like the coronavirus or the one causing Covid-19 has an affinity to bind to these receptors, and it’s only in the animals with these specific receptors that appeared to be infected.
In addition to that as well, the location of these receptors impacts the clinical signs that have actually been shown about the animal.
Okay so now let’s have a look at the history of coronavirus and this is the…the in general of the coronavirus family. So in the 1930s some poor little chickens and developed some pretty severe respiratory signs, they were coughing, they were wheezing, they had terrible Nucor discharges coming from the noses, and I’m some young chickens actually died, you know at a very very high mortality rate.
And some older chickens you know also got sick there develops and kidney problems and egg-laying production was severely affected. Six years later, this virus was actually coulter they cultivated but they couldn’t tell exactly what it was, where they named it avian infectious bronchitis virus and they developed a vaccination and what they’ve found is in unvaccinated animals a hundred per cent of…of animals actually got sick from the…the virus and mortality was up to sixty per cent you know unvaccinated animals.
We moved forward ten years later, and in my mice I’m the mouse hepatitis virus was identified, and a transmissible gastroenteritis virus was identified, and then 20 years later or so, on opposite ends of the world so I think in Chicago and in London, the common cold virus was identified different thought to be different types of viruses.
And then a few years later in again in London, a Scottish biologist named June our media Anderson Thomas hospital through a process called electron microscopy was actually able to show that both the viruses that were identified in people were morphologically related, due to their distinctive club-like spikes, which is you know, which is what I spoke about before, the spike protein not only were they were related to each other, but they were also related to the previous berberis themed features bronchitis virus again from the spike-like proteins.
They were also able to show that these were similar to the mouse patatas virus and transmissible gastroenteritis into rytas virus, and hence the name coronavirus was given to these guys.
So if we look at the origin of coronavirus, it’s really quite interesting the ancestors of coronaviruses in general were thought to have existed intensity up to fifty-five million years ago in the prehistoric age, which is quite fascinating.
And what we find is that bats and birds as warm-blooded flying vertebra are the ideal natural reservoir for the coronavirus, which is a little bit of a problem, because these…these species are essentially you know fly throughout the world and so leading to spread you know coronaviruses in general.
So now if we get to a little bit more specific about SARS over two or the Covid-19 origin, there’s two schools of thought one school of thought is that it’s come from non-human to human, and…and then you know and in the nonhuman, it was already a virulence boras already you know causing quite a problem
Or the other school of thought is that it was not a particular to being for any virus, it simply transferred over the people and in humans, it’s actually mutated and then become quite violent and how we know today.
Immediately after the SARS covid you know Covid 2 genomic sequences were first described in January 2020 after the coronavirus outbreak, multiple labs around the world performed extensive comparisons of this new coronavirus that was identified with previously seen coronavirus.
And what they found was well with his new with the neutrino virus was identified, it was most similar to previous coronaviruses identified in bats in the past, and also to a similar coronavirus that was identified in 2003.
And i think you guys may all remember the SARS outbreak, i guess the and given the similarity of how it was to the coronaviruses in bats, this is where the speculation has come that you know the employers originated in a bat and I’m you know the stores about the various wet markets and so forth that way, and that’s why they’re going down that path is that the potential origin of the coronavirus.
So now a coronavirus, if we look at transmission of it and this is you know in true thing about just the general family of coronavirus is not specifically related to Covid-19. It’s thought that it can be transmitted through either aerosol thermite or the faecal-oral route.
The human coronaviruses tend to infect the epithelial cells of the respiratory facts, or animal coronaviruses generally infect the epithelial cells of the digestive tracts. Sars coronavirus for example infects fire and Aristotle wrote mainly, and again, it seems to bind to the lioness by there’s a stew receptor that I originally brought up earlier.
So coronavirus than people the clinical signs and people really defected by the type of coronavirus, and the sort and author that the person the individual infected if they’ve got other conditions.
So for example, science can really vary, they can be extremely severe and so minimal clinical science to know or to release abuse clinical science, such as we’ve seen with siser over to where you get something called a new mightiest and a respiratory failure.
In animals, again the clinical science of coronavirus really affects which type of animal is infected and also what the specific coronavirus and that infects that specific animal. So I’m a feline medicine specialist, i deal a lot with cats obviously, and I see I’m coronavirus quite frequently in cats and usually does cause as a pretty straightforward diarrhoea.
But in some cats, a coronavirus can actually mutate and can cause a horrible syndrome called feline infectious peritonitis, which in the past has been you know almost a death sentence for these poor cats.
What’s quite amazing now is that there is recently a treatment that’s comfortable allowing us to treat these little guys with on some pretty good responses as well that’s been seeing in the published literature.
so the question is can animals being affected with SARS Covid 2 or Covid-19, as we know it, so we know coronavirus in general is very good effect in affecting multum… infecting multiple species, we only have to look back at you know the SARS outbreak in 2003 to see that experimentally, we had monkeys, mice piece, chicken, guinea pigs, Syrian hamsters and cats being infected in natural conditions in the field cats were infected by that SARS outbreak you know by being in close contact with people.
What we’re seeing with Covid-19 at the moment is that there does appear to be evidence that animals can be infected with Covid-19 but the good news of this evidence is that the numbers appear to be reasonably small, so from when I last checked, I think you know something like seven million people had been infected with the coronavirus.
Well, you’ve probably only got you know you’d have to say less than 100 or so document cases in…in animals and perhaps a little bit more, but certainly not nearly on the scale that’s been infected that people have been infected.
Now that could be for a couple of different reasons, it could be because maybe they’re not showing clinical signs, or maybe we’re not testing you know animals, and we’re just not seeing it.
On the right of the screen that you’ll see, I’m I’ve included a link to a paper which I’m going to speak about knowingly but under some shortly but that’s talking about the prevalence of coronavirus in cats in Wuhan where there was you know that was the initial epicentre of the outbreak.
So the clinical signs in animals are Covid-19 are really variable. we can only judge it on some experimental studies that have been performed and the limited number of animals that have been naturally infected, but what we’re seeing is that it’s a combination of both respiratory and gastrointestinal scions so respira being coughing laboured breathing, sneezing and nasal discharge, and some of the gastrointestinal signs include vomiting and diarrhoea.
Likely people and elevated temperature has been seen, and these signs aren’t specific for coronavirus, there are a lot of other conditions that can cause these clinical signs. those vets, it’s important that we’re ruling out some of these other causes as well.
So now what I’d like to speak about some of the experimental cases of Covid-19 and animals and and ultimately on the experiments are being performed you know really so they can try identify vaccinations for the condition or the work out treatment and try get a bit of a better understanding about how the condition is actually spread amongst animals and you know within species and to other species.
And what were seeing that cats become infected they get a little bit sick but not too bad, but they can certainly spread the disease ferrets become unwell and concludes me the disease dogs can gonna become infected but don’t really become sick and don’t pass on the disease and Syrian hamsters can be infected you don’t know whether they can pass on the disease
So I’ll go specifically and talk about cats a bit more, so there were two major or I guess two bigger studies on the prevalence of Tsarskoe between cats. So one of them is from Wuhan and what they did is they check their antibody titers in these cats, which would suggest you know exposure and the body forming an immune response against the coronavirus
And what they found was at fourteen point seven per cent of cats living that highly on you know under the heart of the epidemic region essentially showed antibody responses to the coronavirus suggesting that they were infected.
Those animals that actually directly lived with people who were driving as we’ve trained a virus X got higher antibody titers. In contrasted this, one of the big labs are eggs did some studies on cats and I believe dogs as were that had a combination of respiratory signs and gastrointestinal science.
And out of 4,000 animals, 0 animals actually came out positive for the coronavirus. Now it’s important to note it with that particular study is we don’t even we don’t know with those cases whether those animals actually ever had exposure to coronavirus, as opposed to the study in one hand.
If we look at an experimental infection to in Syrian hamsters, what we can see with these guys is that there was a study which since the gaben borrowed and challenged contact transmission as well, and what they found that was tissue that was harvested the histopathology, so that means actually looking at the…the effect of the virus on the body tissues.
They also checked for viral load and antibody titers as well and what they found was that these little hamsters could be infected by Covid. They had laboured breathing and weight loss and the history pathology showed extensive lung damage and what’s called apoptosis, which is breakdown of lung tissue. It was very high viral loads what is in the lungs but also the spleen and lymph nodes as well. The good news is all of these guys recovered.

His games was good experimental infections in ferrets as well, and they’ve done a couple of studies on that. And pretty much what these studies that i’ve included a showing is that parrots can transmit the conditions amongst them the disease amongst themselves so what would happen is you’d get some periods that were naturally infected, not that from the infected sorry, experimentally infected by a high viral load then they would introduce some ferrets who had no exposure in the past to the coronavirus and well it’s intimately free

And what they found is that all parents who had exposure and you know to to the other parrots actually ended up developing their…the clinical signs of the disease the viral and humans detected in the lungs, in the nasal turbinates, and also in intestines as well
What they found which was you know I guess similar to what we’re seen in people as well is that before these ferrets showed clinical science and disease that had very high viral loads, and will also able to transmit the infection, and I think this is what they’re saying with people as well is that before the clinical signs are seen, it appears that diseases or is transmissible in an earlier place
And again, the good news is I’m although being quiet eat all ferrets eventually recovered, which is positive. When there’s a whole lot of experimental tests that you know often get produced in in the media and so forth, and i’ve actually referred to some of them and I guess I bring up this slide because I think as sort of you know members of the public it’s important that whenever we really about some of these studies, we…we should critically evaluate them and assess them.
And the reason why I say this is there’s a few problems that we’re seeing that are coming out to some of these studies that have been released and not peer-reviewed at the moment, so what peer reviewing means that you get you know once a study has been produced, you have other members of the profession reviewing that study, checking the methodology the results to make sure it’s all sort of true and pop up.
In many instances this process hasn’t been undertaken straight away, and the reason is is because of the I guess the…the facet of movie nature of this pandemic as much information as possible has been produced and to try to get it out in a timely fashion.
But this does you know closing ethical questions about how much can we actually rely on these results if they haven’t been properly critically evaluated.
It’s also important to realize that some of these studies that have been produced only you know have very few animals, I mean in one study that’s been talked about frequently in cats ensure that it’s very transmissible isn’t disease amongst his species.
Any I’m initially I had three animals and they included another three animals and then but a lot of attention in the media, as well as that it’s important to realize that not what we do in an experimental setting does not necessarily correlate well with what happens in the natural environment.
So what happens in the experiments is they essentially you know inoculating a relatively large amount of you know virus say for example straight up the nose, that’s not to say something like that would happen in the natural setting, similarly that’s you know these animals are in you know special ventilated rooms really to potentially exposed you know to contact with the virus.
That being said, it’s probably timely, I’m you know point to move on to some of these natural infections that were seen at the moment.
And so if we look at you know the cases that have been seen, and the first cases and we’ll the first animal and that came out was a job in Hong Kong, but I’m not speaking about that animal surely but in your New York, to tackle or identify this is an natural environment one cat wasn’t me in a household where someone was coronavirus positive that was not living in a house obligate because what’s coronavirus positive but they were you know they had outdoor access, and apparently in that particular region there was a high amount of coronavirus positive people both those cats showed mild clinical signs of you know respiratory disease primarily and the good news is they both were recovered I’m you know we get in 10 to 14 days so that was really positive.
In Hong Kong where the first case was a dog was identified and this was interesting because what happened in Hong Kong when people were diagnosed with coronavirus, they were recommended that the animal actually enter I’m going to quarantine in a special sort of government-run quarantine facility, and what they mean is 50% of me the two dogs and one cat were eventually infected with coronavirus.
Two dogs really didn’t show many clinical signs, I believe the one cat…cat again had more of a spirit resize that resolved but notice one of the dogs that was infected I believe is a little Pomeranian, and when it was when that dog was when their dog was released from the…the quarantine facility, sadly three days later and it actually passed away at home.
And the cause of death was thought to be related to a Cardian disease that that it had, but it never actually ended up having a post-mortem or anything like that, so I do you know is speculated and find it a little bit strange that it did pass away for three days after the quarantine facility. But again, no that’s purely would have been you know I don’t think we can draw any major conclusions from there.
There’s been a case in Belgium, where one particular cat, I think believe the owner was in Italy, the owner developed clinical signs, came home the captured little signs again Speed Tree. The good news is the cat made a improvement after um you know a period of time, cases have been reported in Russian, Spain, Germany, in France. This is as it last week and I’m sure since then there’s probably a couple of other cases that have certainly popped up about.
So I’m in the media there was this was quite interesting as well, and we’ve got…got quite a lot of attention. Some zoo animals actually came up positive with the condition, so this was ever of zoom the bronze in…in America.
So essentially five Tigers and three lions eventually tested positive and they showed respiratory signs and disease so the what happened was out of those that tested positive four tigers and one line actually developed clinical signs.
These animals were in a very stable population from my understanding, they never had respiratory clinical signs in the past, and…and it was found that they actually had exposure to zookeeper, who was actually infected with a disease.
The good news is all those animals actually improved with time, and you know none of them passed away or anything like that, and this does pose some questions though, you know about her own advice for the potential risk for populations of wild animals, specifically wild cats and no endangered species down the track.
And you know I guess you know that obviously Ravens raised concerns as well, similarly as well no they’re great apes, you know having very very sort of similar gene known to people. And so there’s certainly concerned about you know the risk is ready for any virus in humans to the grey apes and especially with some of those animals I’m have very much endangered populations.
Over in the Netherlands and mink farms which they’re actually out closing down which is obviously a good thing I believe they use nice for fur.
What they found on this thing was truth and they bonded ended up beautiful is that they had a death rate in a period of time where animals showed respiratory and gastrointestinal signs.
Signs appeared to be worse in pregnant animals and it was found that the coronavirus or Covid-19 and affected some of these animals on these farms and the thought against fred was from the one of the keepers to the meat rather than the other way around
At one stage they did speculate that the means maybe gave it do you know to the people who were looking after them, but I believe this is thought not to be correct, but there’s also thought that it has been spread among some of the minks on the farms itself.
So the big question is then which animals should actually be tested for coronavirus 19 or SARS Covid 2. As I said earlier in the discussion, the fecal science for coronavirus and not specific for coronavirus so as bits we’ve been advised that if the animal for example comes in with a respiratory disease before we go straight to making a diagnosis so you know SARS Covid 2, it’s important that we rule out other conditions.
But once we do that the board is that if animals fit certain groups and it’s warranted to potentially test for the condition, so if for example, animals with a close contact of the person and but you know I think if we…we only have to look at the natural infections to see
whether you know getting some of these criteria, so for example if to look at you know you know animals and one of the criterias, animals in a close contact with a person with suspected Covid-19 with the animal has shown clinical signs.
So that you know a good example that it was one of the cats from New York, then we’ve got animals with a exposure to a known high risk environment, ie whether it’s a human outbreak has occurred again we only have to look at you know one of those cats in New York who lived in a an area which had a high population of people infected by the condition
The third criteria is threatened endangered, or otherwise on impaired animals I mean rehabilitation or zoological facilities. Again, up with exposure to people with Tsarskoe but 99 animals and so this will be similar to the tiger suit scenario.
And then animals in masks here or group settings, such as a shelter, boarding facility facility, animal feeding operation or zoo such as the meats. So any animal fitting those criteria when they’re shown two equal signs they’re the animals that whip I mean you know I guess the people focused on potentially doing testing for.
But the thought is that you know we’ve been adviced as veterinarians to try to limit our testing, I think largely because you know we want to make sure the majority of the testing no reagents or so forth are used for people, and you know rather than animals but you know if appropriate certainly we do have access to that
So another question is I mean is there a risk of zoonosis, zoonosis means you know is the disease transmitted antique humans from animals. The good news is currently is at today there appears to be no evidence that pet animals are involved the transmission sarcoma to humans. The maintenance of Covid-19 is from humans is spread to spread amongst humans to humans and again, this could change with time, but this is what the current research is suggesting.
What we do think is maybe fur may act as a phone – or what that means is that say for example, someone with SARS Covid-19 good coffin their pet that could go on the pets fur and then if someone else was to get that animal within a limited amount of time and then you know put a hand in the mouth for example, well that could potentially be I guess a method of spread of disease.
Now again that’s never actually been proven yet or anything like that, but obviously no certainly thought to the consideration.
So now if we look at the impact of Covid-19 pandemic on pets, we have to look at you know a number of things and for me I’ve sort of divided up in the good and the bad.
The good is that you can certainly see through this pandemic, you know with people staying at home the human-animal bond has increased animals I think from all of us we all know how important they are for mental well-being, and I think you know they’ve helped a lot of people through this sunniness night scenario certainly if you’ve been isolated at home, and you hadn’t been able to go to work, haven’t seen your friends. I think it’s been an absolute
blessing to have animals you know to keep you company and you know get you outside for walks and things like that as appropriate.
Adoption rates from some of the shelter’s has significantly increased and that’s good and bad and which I’ll speak out in one moment.
But then I guess you know food you look about the bad I mean there’s something you know what I term unfounded zoonosis, so I have had questions for some of my clients, who you know often had it elderly or sick people in the household saying no do they have to read home their they’ve had animal you know during this crisis because they’re worried that the tenth thing that pet might spread the disease to you know one of their loved ones.
I’m again there’s no evidence to suggest this, some of my colleagues have actually had people ask them to euthanize their big hits which was become completely a horrible thought I’m you know based on just complete fear.
And…and then there’s this concept of opportunistic adoption, and…and I think this comes from the idea that you know often there might be a spike you know adoption through you know Christmas and then you know a month or two later these animals getting reposing because people realize how much work it is to look after your pets.
I don’t know if that’s been proven true um you know so far for my discussion with the short as it doesn’t look like animals are getting returned or anything like that so thank God, wait for that saying that way.
And we’ve heard some horrible you know situations about an increase in domestic violence through this period sadly, you know because people are at home in smaller spaces and you know which is obviously no excuse, but the…the concern is that it’s you know not only for humans that animals could potentially be impacted by that as well, which is you know horrifying.
And then you know one of the big things is I’m you know we spend all that time with our animals at home a lot of people have adopted these new animals, but now we’ve got to go back to work because you know things are you know key to returning to normal, and then what happens to our pets you know who’ve been so used to spinning you know literally all hours of the day with us, and this key player problem called separation anxiety.
But I’m really going into detail shortly a little bit, but I won’t go into too much detail because another bit an area Dr Kersti Seksel is actually presenting on this for you guys in a couple of weeks’ time and she’s a fantastic on behaviours.
So the next question, this is for animals you know living with Covid-19 and you know increased home time for people. I think in general, and our animals have been absolutely over the moon that we’ve been at home a little bit more, but it doesn’t always you know that doesn’t always apply.
So I’m sure in the audience today we’ve got probably a mixture of dog owners and cat owner and I’m a cat and a dog owner but I certainly know when I move you know a chair or a bit of furniture thirty degrees in my house, you know my cat will spend two days looking at it and think what the hell is going on with that, and that’s actually quite important because animals can get stressed about changes in routine and you know that can actually lead to condition so cats they get urinary problems if this dress for example.
So what I advise people to do is you know at home try to you know make sure you’re structuring your day routine is important not just for people then but for animals as well, so you need to make sure you stick to feeding time, and exercise times, you know also make sure your animals have got safe spaces, and we’re doing your zoom meetings or when you’ve got kids around the house
Animals need to sleep a little bit and you know we need to make sure that you know they’ve got time to actually get away and you know sleep you know get away from you know what’s going on and we cats some advise that you give them little hidey holes
And also make sure that you know things like children are supervisor on pets especially the spending time at home, you know people are busy I mean on zoom meetings and so forth um one of the biggest reason you know reasons we get buyers is actually from it disturbing and you know disturbed by the fatling and we in the home environment, which is um notice something that is faced what eventual insure that is environmental enrichment at home and I’ll talk about that in a moment.
The big question is you know automatically what happens when we return to work, and one of the you know the conditions that we get concerned about it and then we want to reward is something called separation anxiety.
This is manly is a problem in dogs but I wonder if it’s also her problems in cats as well they just don’t show as many some clinical science that dogs would but it’s a term that’s used to describe dogs distress and destructive behaviour when they felt left alone or even when their owners start to prepare to leave the home.
I mean it can include urinating or defecating in new places, escaping, digging, chewing, howling, barking, and pacing to reduce the risk of this happening. I think one of the things is that again, and I’ve touched on the slide before, we need to make sure that you know there’s a little bit of separation about pets and ourselves, you know in this frame time so you need to condition your animals to think from that time alone can be positive, so things like various individual enrichment methods, so you know you can put a little bit of you know there’s various sort of puzzle toys you can get, which has got food in it and animals can spend hours around you know trying to knock out the little you know a bit of food from…from the toy and you know it’s actually stimulating for…for them to do it and they can also realize that you they don’t need you, don’t need to be around for them to have a good time.
As I said before, making sure they’ve got a good time to… enough time to sleep during the day. Animals you know in some instances sleep after sort of you know 15 20 hours a day,
and it’s important to let them do that. Just because you’re at home, it doesn’t mean that yeah okay they still need this lee it’s very important
And there is such a thing as too many walks, you know most dogs and maybe knit between 30 to 60 minutes of aerobic exercise a day. We don’t want to overdo it.
Make sure you spend time, you know invest time into training, but I think the critical thing is just making sure you’ve got a little bit of you know set times apart, so start off with five minutes apart, ten minutes apart, make sure there’s rooms that perhaps they don’t have access to, and so they don’t become completely reliant on you.
And again I’m Dr Kersti second we’ll be talking about this talk in a couple of weeks time so I’m nada to join up to that.
So one of the big things for me, you know questions I get asked is you know how do I protect my pet through this Covid 19 pandemic. I guess my…my feeling about that it’s not so much you know as far as we know the effect of the virus on the animal, you know numbers just so small at the moment, you know two effects on cats and…and so forth, and you know again the majority of animals seem to recovered quite well but it’s more so I look at it as a thinking that that pandemic on the animal. So one thing i’ll say to people is make sure you’ve got two weeks worth of provisions being food and medications. During this period I’m you know some medications have actually been harder for us to come buy because you know they need to be used for people which is perfectly understandable.
At the same time you know, I think it’s important to try out two weeks with new port of medications. I used the term two weeks because that’s about the quarantine period that you know people are often taken out of action, and that’s really important
And the question is you know should animal speedily be allowed out of the house, you know what to interact with other animals during this period. Really hard question, and I guess the general consensus, for example, one of the disease control agencies in the states was that you know they shouldn’t be I think that’s you know in practice, it’s quite difficult certainly. I think if someone’s got Covid-19, they should keep their pet isolated from other animals and…and you know especially cats as well.
And you know the other things if you happen to develop you know Covid-19, reduce contact when you pet, i’ll speak to you about that in a little bit more detail in a second.
It’s really important to get the household cleaning, coronaviruses usually you know quite visual, there in blood viruses so that interests one quite will – you know most of the disinfection surround the house, whether it be leach or some alcohols as well.
Studies have shown that the coronavirus can live in you know in an on the environment, I mean if your periods of time don’t really, you know how long they survival really depends on ultimately you know what the conditions are, the temperature, but also what the surfaces are, so they don’t do very well on cardboard for example, and you got any survived you know something like four hours or something along…along the lines that way.
But you know and other surfaces such as plastic and stainless steel they can survive you know at least three days.
The impact of Covid 19 on vets, this has been quite a challenge for me as you know I work at a reasonably busy…busy hospital in Sydney and what we’ve had to do is we’ve formed a team structure or system, and we’re ultimately you know because if you know some of our staff get sick, we go quarantine, we’ve got a make sure the hospital it stays open.
We’ve also you know had a situation where you know we’ve been sharing our resources so there was a period that our ventilators were loaned out to the hospitals, they will never use thank God in the end, but you know it was ready to go, and we had to think about some medications. There are some medications we couldn’t get hold of during this period. And we also had to think about no rationalizing least about personal protective equipment, especially again, because you know there the human guise needed a time you know I’m certainly in the early stages.
And then you know as I mentioned before the critical thing for us is protecting our staff, clients and patients got a little video here with some below started off and I run through with you.
So this is at our hospital, we had an outdoor waiting room whenever to speed it along because it looks like were actually running out of time but this is a client. I’m coming along and you know with a head I’m unfortunately sounds not working and so I’m going to describe what’s happening if it’s having a suit for the full.
But what happens is you’ll see she gets to a sign and on that sign says please ring reception, and what we were trying to do here is actually limit the client, staff direct, you know interaction or communication.
It’s sort of like almost like a curb side serve or valet service of what would happen is you know our receptionist taking the call, she’s actually getting an idea about you know what’s wrong with the pet then and we can send out one of the nurses for triage.
I’m just going to fast forward because again we’re running out of time and so now she’s painting out the back to get one of the nurses to her and she going to give him a description about why the animal presented in the first place.
And so this is one of our nurses coming up, and so ultimately she’s asking the owner you’ll be asking questions to the owner, like you know how do you have any respect resize yourself, have you been exposed to Covid-19 or anything along the lines that way, and then of course you should get an idea about what’s going on with the pair.
You’ll see she’s got a lead in hand so she’s going to get the owner to take off the collar because we don’t want anything like that to change the actors phone lines for a style so she’s changing, okay moving through whoops there we go come on
So now she’s taking a doggy inside, okay moving along, just changing all the colours and everything.
That she’s gone into one of the console rooms which is going to do a triage, so you know you can see the good news is it doesn’t look too sick obviously to the dog was sick you know this dog would probably be taken straight out the back.
And optimally she’s going to wipe the dog down and you know again to reduce the risk impossible for a mite and then she takes out the back she puts in a little holding cage triage cage.
At the time that the animal came in, and then this is greatest one of the vets. So she’s now getting a handover from the nurse, she’ll examine the dog and then what she’s examined the dog. She will find the client and you know who then give her recommendations and so forth, which you know really leads me into this like he which is getting your pet to the vet.
The idea is that you know this is sort of these non-contact visits where you drop the animal off. Dean’s will be done over the phone your pet will be examined out, and there’s also telemedicine as well, so certainly for some conditions for example.
If you’ve got a relationship with your vent you can throw it up and say look my dogs is laying for example, and can you give me advice, and your vet will let you know ask you…you know what you know advise whether or not you need to come down or they’re not be able to give you some advice and how it can be traded at home again and there’s a little bit of legalities to this story it’s important that you do have a relationship with your vet I mean kind of stirring up any vet I can get advice because I’m that they do have to have examined your pet within a period to be able to give you information over the phone.
So then the question is should I avoid contact with my pets or other animals if I’m secret coronavirus. Pretty much exactly the same and recommendations are given I’m for the spirit of you know SARS you know – amongst people – your pets as well.
So the recommendations are if you have Covid-19 about cuddling, kissing, or sleeping, you know with your pet in the same vet or feeding know from the same food or anything like that from your pet that’s really really critical, make sure you wash your hands you know they’d saw that 20 seconds of hand washing can actually cure the avoided it breaks down the envelope of the coronavirus so that’s really critical
And then I mean you know the question is you know ensure your pet does not go outdoors until we know more. I think that’s especially important for cats, it has been showing that cats can transmit the virus you know amongst themselves and so forth that way so that’s really really critical I’m at least for the year early food while you’ve got it
And obviously that I’m you know if you catch those clinical signs you need on contact a vet.
To have a plan in place in case you becoming what I’m unwilling to go to the hospital so that goes back to the sort of hold two weeks, you know have an emergency kit, have a list of
things to do medications times, you know that your pet medications three times the amount as well what times have a plan for any you know the scene events that could happen.
So if you know your vets got a particular skin problem or something like that have a contact number you know for your vet dermatologist, so then the person looking after the animal and you know you can go straight that way rather than you know you know there’s always an action plan in place.
You know the question is should you have the over your pet at home or can you put an aborting can you have a friend or someone else look after your pet and that would I guess be ideal.
And what do I do if I’m in quarantine or self-isolation, my pet is on well. By law you can’t break quarantine so that’s important but if you’ve hit some more contact your bit you know there’s mobile fits visits, they can be performed.
Sometimes you know if your animal is sick then you know, your animal can be picked up and brought down to the vet clinic, you’ll find that the majority of vets, especially your local it’s can be extremely flexible in this situation, and you know every want your pet so you know in the highest like this priority for the vet and you know that and our staff as well so and you know things can be made to happen, so I wouldn’t stress about it or anything like that just make sure you communicate and contact your vet.
And then what I do if I think my animal is getting the virus, get in contact with it’s important to book an appointment rather than just showing up, make sure you tell your vet in advance if your animals been exposed to Covid-19 and of course if your animals showing any signs of your nurse, and they’ll likely investigate for a number of diseases, but ultimately you know if they feel it’s warranted, they could potentially do the test for coronavirus.
So for me I guess is a potentially a few unanswered questions, and I think you know in people and it seems like people that immunocompromised certainly have an increased risk of you know getting quite sick from the disease. I don’t think we know enough in animals that immunocompromised animals how sick they can get from the disease, you know it was that dog for example that I’m you know dead for me I just after quarantine in Hong Kong and I just wonder if you know could we see a similar I guess more severe effect of something like firown’ virus with some of our elderly patients that have a number of comorbidities so that’s a possibility
And then I guess you know there’s always the question about a zoonosis, can it potentially be spread to people, you know at the moment the information says no but it’s something that’s always alone now and you know we’ve always got to keep an open mind to this because that could you know have that some heavy consequences
So the Australian Pet Association which is our governing body has some advice to our heads, the good news is they don’t believe there’s any evidence to suggest you can get Covid-19 to new pet keep your pets and you know it’s part of the family unit. Plan for your pets in case
you need to go to hospital, practice good hygiene around the home, and then review advice from your vet clinic before any visit.
Thank you so much, everyone and for giving me the time to have a chat with you. I’m more than happy to answer any questions or anything like that and it’s been a pleasure talking to you all, thank you so much and we’re going to hand it over to Dr Danny Houlihan.
Perfect, thanks so much Michael, and so we do have some questions from the audience. So the first question is have you performed any test for Covid-19 on pets within your practice.
Yes, we have, we performed it on two cats, which came from coronavirus exposed households. Those cats they had respiratory science, both cats came back negative for the disease. Prior unfortunately, we only had testing available to us I believe from May and I’m trying to April, we had two young cats as well, which ended up you know having clinical signs but was never got tested at the time because it just wasn’t available to us and i’ve got a few colleagues and other colleagues and other veterinary hospitals who have tested for it and it’s all come back negative so far.
Great and then the next question is do you think that Covid 19 will continue to influence the hygiene protocols in vet practices, and this attendee has indicated that their vets been asking them to wait outside for all of their appointments until recently where there are permitted to bring one person into the clinic.
Yeah, that’s a really good question and I think it’s a society, I think our hygiene has improved a lot, you know I didn’t mention at our Hospital for example, we’ve got this bill that goes off every half an hour requiring all of us to wash our hands. It’s literally this alarm and every half now we have to wash our hands and I think as a society as society would become you know had developed a farm you know better understanding about hygienic practices and so forth.
Do I think it’s gonna maintain a bed hospitals? No I think with time you know you will see that your bed hospital will open up their doors a little bit more, you know one of the critical things that their hospitals like many businesses face is that they’ve got a responsibility to look after your pet and the concern and you know and their staff as well, and the concern is that if members of staff become you know unfortunately, you know see with the coronavirus and know then they’re forced to, you know just because of quarantine that I’m you know in general in a bed environment. We all work pretty close together with each other so one member of staff becomes sick there’s a chance at a number of member of staff will at least be exposed, and that could take them out of action.
So what your bed possible is doing is really trying to limit I guess that the chance of you know one they start being exposed unnoticed so limiting any risk of anyone getting see it also try to maximize the chance at the hospital won’t ever have to close down, so then you know they can continue to look after your pet.
Now I do think with times restrictions what is off but you know I can see we’ve just started opening our doors to our clients and now we’ve got this big plastic and I guess see through
things so when you’re speaking to our receptionists, there’s almost like a plastic barrier in front of you so, you know they’re not getting any you know you can see them but you know there’s no risk of exposure to know any any respiratory and secretions or anything like that.
Similarly as well I mean what we’re doing now now that we’ve opened up a little bit more is that we’re limiting out you know discussion times with the owner, so we’re not examining the animal in front of the owner we’re taking the animal out of that I’m sure our procedures area to examine and then we’re having each other the owner, but yeah you know around about sort of you know a long way, yeah I don’t think it’s going to improve with time, but it might be a little bit long.
Thanks Michael and then the next question is can you think we’ll continue to see more dogs and cats being diagnosed with Covid-19 in the coming months.
Yeah, I think that’s a really good question and i’ve got in it look, unfortunately, I feel like in Australia, and let’s you know hope this remains the case, and it seems like we’ve dodged a lot of bullets in this country, and so I think the chance of you know a number of cases coming in and out of Australia are probably small.
But yeah, I do think we’re going to get you know cases and pop up you know more you know more and more overseas. Again, the big question you know that I asked is are we not seeing cases and you know of Covid-19 animals because they’re just not getting it as much or is it because they’re just not showing as many clinical signs or are we not testing enough.
Now the tests are becoming more and more available, you know perhaps that I’m you know to the the human population, they will possibly it’ll be a little bit less sort of you know I guess you know easy because we were really advised you know only test if we really feel that it’s appropriate to test, but I think you know once there’s more reagent and so for the bailer born there’s more testing we’ll probably pick up more infections.
Great thanks Michael and then the next question is are there any other common viruses that people get that they can transmit to their pets.
Yeah, that’s…that’s a really really good question, and so the answer is yes, you know that there’s a number of viruses they can get, so and again, you know there’s coronaviruses um you know different to this current family there’s a series of worms that can get, and you know it’s often thought that animals can diseases to people but it’s often there the other way around.
There’s a number of respiratory infections that people can get to something called pasture Ellison suited monus’s I think believe whether there’s transmission both ways, I’d have to double-check that as well but yeah, absolutely, there is and I think you know probably the critical thing about the law is that this practice good hygiene you know a lot of these conditions you know will or viruses will die with you know good hand washing and things like that and I think that’s is critical, so you know when you’re petting your dog or your kids are petting your dog where you can wash your hands after.
I mean you know make sure they’re not eating in the same areas you and things like that you know when you pick up the droppings ideally you know, use gloves, wash your hands after and I think a lot of those practices had to go a long way to reduce the risk of transmission.
Perfect, thank you Michael, and then another question which you’ve given some handy hints on is how do we go about transitioning a dog once we start going back to work, dogs are used to having their humans home now and so when the humans leave the house they do become anxious and so for the attendee who asked that question, we do have a webinar coming up with Dr Kersti Seksel as Michael indicated before, and she’s got two webinars that she’ll be presenting including one on helping pets avoid separation anxiety. Go ahead Michael.
Yeah I mean that’s what I was going to say um you know Dr Kersti Seksel will be to answer that question but yes definitely, you know I think little things like from now, you can start try get you know get your pet used to being separated from you, I mean let’s start with five minutes ten minutes, some of the things like I know for example with my own dog at home like when I go to work I just have to pick up the keys and the dog knows what’s happening. Try drag that sort of you know cycle a little bit so for example you know pick up your keys put on your work clothes but then sit down and watch TV or you know sit down and you know read oh you know eat breakfast or something like that. Tries to have you know like the specific shoes that you animal might you know anticipate that this is happening
In addition to that as well, make sure you know you give your animal things to be occupied with, which doesn’t necessarily involve you being there so there’s a whole of the puzzle toys and things like that, where you know animals can have with the mountains of fun doing you know they can hours trying to get little biscuits from these little puzzle toys and you know they realize that you don’t have to always be the centre of attention, you know life can be good. You know without you and sometimes I think we won out and the more to think that we’re the centre of attention because we love it but at the same time it does have negative consequences.
Perfect, thank you so much Michael. Thanks once again for all those questions. Unfortunately, we’re out of time today thank you all again for attending the webinar. We hope you’ve enjoyed the session. A very special thank you to Dr Linton for putting today’s presentation together and for giving up his time to share his knowledge with us.
Please remember to register for the next pause and learn webinars hosted by Dr Kersti Seksel on setting your new pet up for success and separation anxiety.
If you’d like to learn more about Petsure, GapOnly or the paw and learn webinar series, please follow us on social or visit our website.
Goodnight, everyone and thank you so much for attending
Thank you very much, everyone.