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Collected Item: “Pets can catch Covid from owners, study suggests”

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Pets can catch Covid from owners, study suggests

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text story

Tell us a story; share your experience. Describe what the object or story you've uploaded says about the pandemic, and/or why what you've submitted is important to you.

Swabs were taken from 310 pets in 196 households where a human infection had been detected.
Six cats and seven dogs returned a positive PCR result, while 54 animals tested positive for virus antibodies.
"If you have Covid, you should avoid contact with your cat or dog, just as you would do with other people," Dr Els Broens, from Utrecht University, said.
The researchers say the most likely route of virus transmission is from human to animal, rather than the other way round.
"We can't say there is a 0% risk of owners catching Covid from their pets," Veterinary Microbiological Diagnostic Centre Dr Broens said.
"At the moment, the pandemic is still being driven by human-to-human infections, so we just wouldn't detect it."

Use one-word hashtags (separated by commas) to describe your story. For example: Where did it originate? How does this object make you feel? How does this object relate to the pandemic?

Pandemic Pets, transmission, pet, dog, cat, owner, antibodies, research

Enter a URL associated with this object, if relevant.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-57666245

Who originally created this object? (If you created this object, such as photo, then put "self" here.)

Jim Reed, BBC News

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2021-07-01
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