ABOVE: © ISTOCK.COM, FONGLEON356
In April, a scruffy pug named Winston started coughing and wouldn’t touch his chow—a clear sign the pup wasn’t feeling well. Three of the four humans in his family in Chapel Hill, North Carolina had come down with COVID-19, and they were concerned he’d caught it too. Later testing showed the pug didn’t, in fact, have a SARS-CoV-2 infection. But a handful of other household pets have tested positive for the virus in the last few months, a cue for scientists to take a serious look at whether our canine and feline companions could transmit the virus to one another or to humans. There’s no evidence so far that they can.
However, SARS-CoV-2 is not the only infectious agent that scientists worry our furry friends might share with us. Researchers have also been studying whether multidrug-resistant organisms—and the genes they use to resist death by antimicrobial ...
