Tiger in US zoo tests positive for coronavirus

A tiger at the Bronx Zoo has tested positive for the coronavirus, in what is understood to be the first known virus in an animal in the U.S. or a tiger anywhere, federal officials and the zoo said Sunday.

The 4-year-old Malayan tiger named Nadia — and six other tigers and lions that have also fallen ill — are understood to have been infected by a zoo worker who wasn’t yet indicating symptoms, the zoo said. The first animal started showing signs March 27, and all are doing well and wanted to recover, said the zoo, which has been closed to the public since March 16 amid the surging coronavirus cases in New York.

The test result amazed zoo officials: “I couldn’t believe it,” director Jim Breheny said. But he strives the finding can provide to the global fight against the virus that causes COVID-19.

“Any kind of knowledge that we get on how it’s transmitted, how different species react to it, that knowledge somehow is going to provide a greater base resource for people,” he said in an interview.

The result brings up new questions about transmission of the virus in animals. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which confirmed Nadia’s test result at its veterinary lab, said there are no known cases of the infection in U.S. pets or livestock.

“There doesn’t appear to be, at this time, any information that suggests that the animals can spread the virus to people or that they can be a source of the United States,” Dr Jane Rooney, a veterinarian and a USDA official, said in the meeting.

The USDA said Sunday it’s not proposing routine coronavirus testing of animals, in zoos or elsewhere, or of zoo workers. Still, Rooney noted a small number of animals in the U.S. had been tested through the USDA’s National Veterinary Services Laboratories, and all those examinations came back negative except Nadia’s.

There have been a handful of reports outside the U.S. of pet dogs or cats becoming infected after close contact with contagious people, including a Hong Kong dog that tested positive for a low level of the pathogen in February and early March. Hong Kong agriculture authorities concluded that pet dogs and cats couldn’t pass the virus to human beings but could test positive if exposed by their owners.

Some researchers have been trying to understand the susceptibility of different animal species to the virus, and to determine how it spreads among animals, according to the Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health.

The American Veterinary Medical Association and the federal centres for disease control and preventions have been proposing that out of a quantity of warning, people ill with the coronavirus should limit contact with animals — advice that the veterinary group reiterated after learning of the tiger’s test result

The staff estimated there could be a relatively routine justification for the cats’ symptoms but tested Nadia for coronavirus out of “due diligence and an abundance of caution,” Breheny said. Only Nadia was tested because it takes anaesthesia to get a sample from a big cat, and she had already been knocked out to be examined.

“There is no competition for testing between these two very different situations,” he said.

The seven sickened cats live in two areas at the zoo, and the animals had contact with the same worker, who is doing OK, zoo officials said. They said there are no signs of illness in other big cats on the property.

Staffers who work with the cats will now wear infection-protection garb, as primate keepers have done for years because of the animals’ closer genetic ties to human beings, Breheny said.