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Can you get COVID-19 from your dog or cat?

April 13, 2020 — 

Social distancing should include your pet, say some infectious disease experts.

While the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC) in the USA notes that there is no evidence to suggest that the fur and hair from cats or dogs can transmit COVID-19, it is only reasonable that pets could carry the virus between people and spread the disease.

In a feature article on CTV News, Dr. Kevin Coombs, an infectious disease expert in medical microbiology at the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, said that there was “nothing inherently antiseptic about hair.”

Dr. Coombs cautioned that pet hair and fur could theoretically pass along the virus vector if a pet owner who tested positive for COVID-19 was to pet a dog or cat and then that animal was in turn touched by an uninfected person.

Read the interview with Dr. Coombs and other experts on CTV News here.

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