Vanessa Hale, Assistant Professor, Department of Veterinary Preventive Medicine at The Ohio State University of Veterinary Medicine, talks about their research program and how it informs them if they see SARS-COV-2.
I wanted to just begin by asking you a little bit about transmission other than human-to-human transmission. Obviously, we’ve spent the last year talking about, you know, what is causing COVID to spread. Can you tell me a little bit about what you and your colleagues are looking at in terms of animal-to-human and human-to-animal transmission just to start there?
HALE: Sure. The name of our research program is “E-SCOUT: Environmental Surveillance For COVID-19 In Ohio, Understanding Transmission” and specifically, we are looking at all of the environments outside of humans. We’re looking at animals and we’re looking in Ohio waters including stormwater and wastewater to try to determine if we see a presence of the SARS-COV-2 virus. If we see a presence of it, what implications might that have for human health, for animal health and for the environment? Our teams are testing broadly across many different animal species. This includes some of the animals that come directly into the Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine, including cats. We’re also testing pigs at agricultural fairs so state and county fairs where pigs may be coming together for shows. We’re also testing wildlife in partnership with the Ohio Wildlife Center and Ohio Metro Parks: we’re testing deer, squirrels, mink, rabbits and working closely with a lot of different community members, including other veterinarians and veterinary clinics, to test things like ferrets as well. If we find SARS-CoV-2 in another species or environment, then we can begin asking questions about transmission. How did this animal get SARS-CoV-2 – was it spread from a human? Another animal? The environment? Can this animal spread it to other animals or humans or the environment, and what risks does this pose for future outbreaks of COVID-19?
You had mentioned cats, but not dogs. Is there a reason or is it cats and dogs – is it domestic pets?
HALE: Our surveillance program is specifically targeting cats, and that’s because there is evidence of increased susceptibility in cats as compared to dogs. However, we also tested dogs as well. To date, of all of the animals we have sampled around Ohio (over 1,400 animals), none of them have come up positive yet.
You say yet, so the possibility is there. This can happen. It can be transmitted to animals?
HALE: We have learned that COVID-19 likely started in an animal, possibly a horseshoe bat which has the closest related genetic sequence we have for SARS-COV-2. There may also be some intermediate animal host that is yet to be identified. And then once the pandemic started, we also got reports from around the world, including around the United States, of infections in animals, whether that was at the San Diego Zoo with the gorillas or the Bronx Zoo with the lions and tigers. We’ve also seen household pets and we know that cats and dogs have also tested positive for SARS-COV-2 in very low numbers. As of June 2021, almost 200 pets (cats and dogs) around the United States have tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. However, susceptibility overall appears to be low as even in households of humans who have COVID, not all pets (cats/dogs) are testing positive and even fewer pets are showing any type of clinical sign. Importantly, per the CDC, animals don’t appear to be playing a significant role in human infections. The only case where we’ve seen and recorded animal-to-human transmission is in mink, and that was on mink farms where there are a lot mink, which are very susceptible to SARS-COV-2 and where the mink can get very sick. In some of these cases we saw a passage between a farm worker to the mink and the mink back to a mink farm worker.
You mentioned, Dr. Hale, that you’re also testing the environment. Can you tell me a little bit more? Is it water streams – where else, again, are you looking?
HALE: We are looking in wastewater and stormwater. Stormwater is urban runoff, or the water that’s running down your street, and this work is being lead by Dr. Ryan Winston. Wastewater can be collected from a building, a collection of buildings, or from a wastewater treatment plant. On the Ohio State University campus, we’re testing wastewater from buildings – like dorms. The wastewater work is lead by Dr. Jiyoung Lee’s lab who also analyzes wastewater from around Columbus more broadly at the Jackson Pike and Southerly wastewater treatment plants where we’re analyzing virus presence and virus burden. We know that people can shed virus through their feces, and we can see that spikes in the presence of virus in wastewater actually precede the spikes that we see in outbreaks. This is being used as a tool for both monitoring and prediction: Is there a particular area or region that we might want to target for things like testing or treatment if we see that there is a spike in the SARS-COV-2 virus?
It might sound like a simple question, but why is it important to gather that information? Why is it important to have that science on hand?
HALE: This helps us understand and predict and prevent in more effective ways. So if we know, for example, that there’s a section of dorms on campus or there’s a prison or there’s an area of Columbus where we’re seeing this spike in SARS-CoV-2 in our population, we can better target resources like testing and treatment to make sure that all of those resources are going to the right place so that we can make sure we’re meeting the needs of the people in that environment, and preventing further disease spread.
And in terms of being able to monitor the animal transmission again, why what does that – why is that important? What impact does that have?
HALE: From the beginning of this pandemic, we have seen that animals were playing an important role and that this virus likely jumped from an animal to a human, and now we know this virus can also jump from humans back to animals. We know that this virus can jump species, and what we want to know next or be able to tell as early as possible is what other species can it be in? Can it find a reservoir where it can continue to circulate in the Ohio wildlife population or the Ohio pet population, or Ohio agricultural animals? We don’t have evidence of that yet, but it’s something we want to know as early as possible to try to understand what might those risks be to animal health and to human health?
And what is the length of your research or investigation? Does it have an end date or a stop date?
HALE: We started in about May or June of 2020, and we’re going to continue our monitoring throughout this first full year to ensure that we’ve sampled broadly and widely throughout Ohio in many different types of animals. As future funding becomes available, we will endeavor to continue our surveillance efforts.
Is there anything I didn’t ask you, Dr. Hale, that you would want to make sure people know?
HALE: I think you’ve got everything. I guess the one important thing we like to remind people of is that there’s no current evidence that animals are playing a significant role in human infections.
Information keeps changing where we had all heard about the transmission where dogs were tested positive for COVID, so people were you know, I saw dogs with masks on and I saw people afraid to bring their pets outside. Is that unfounded or you know, do you mind if I ask you Is that something that people should still be worried about, that their domestic animals their and their dogs who are out more than certainly than their cats, you see people out with their dogs all the time is that a concern for people still?
HALE: The COVID-19 pandemic continues to be an evolving situation, and recently we’ve heard a lot about variants emerging in different places, and we don’t fully understand what the implications of those variants are. Some of them appear to be more transmissible. We’re also concerned: Will some of them evade immune responses? Will some of them respond differently to the vaccine? Because we don’t fully understand what may continue to happen with variants, we want to continue to monitor in animal populations. We aren’t currently seeing evidence that animals will cause any type of increased transmission amongst humans, but it is something that we want to be on the lookout for. Currently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests that the animals that we share our homes with should be treated like other human family members. If we are sick, we should isolate away from them as much as possible. We should also use really good hand hygiene before and after we interact with them. No masks, no disinfectant for the animals, but they are recommending distancing for the animals, particularly if you have been sick or someone in your household has been sick. Limit that animal contact outside of the household as well.
Interview conducted by Ivanhoe Broadcast News.
END OF INTERVIEW
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