Cats have been labelled as a potential ‘bridge’ that could lead to dangerous viruses jumping from species to species and cause catastrophic pandemics like Covid and the Spanish Flu
Scientists have dubbed cats a “mixing vessel” that could form a “bridge” for the deadly H5N1 virus. It could to jump species and cause a potential pandemic similar to Covid and the Spanish Flu.
Pigs have long been regarded as the biggest zoonotic threat to public health as their cells allow viruses to mix and mutate creating new strains that are capable of triggering human pandemics.
These new strains have had deadly consequences, such as the 2008/9 swine flu pandemic and it is suspected a jump from pigs to humans caused the catastrophic Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918.
A study, published last week in the academic journal Emerging Microbes & Infections, found that pets could be just as dangerous and cats could “serve as a bridge for cross-species transmission of H5N1 viruses.”
The avian H5N1 pandemic has killed more than a million birds across the world in recent years and now the virus has been detected in more than 21 mammalian species.
More than half of the cats infected with H5N1in US have died both painful and drawn out deaths. In Texas, 24 cats became infected with H5N1 with the virus after drinking raw milk from barnyard floors where sick cattle were being held.
Post mortem samples taken from the cats’ brains, lungs and stomachs found the animals’ cells had receptors which, like pigs, meant they were both susceptible to both mammalian and avian forms of influenza.
The study said: “The ability of the virus to persist and adapt in mammalian hosts heightens the risk of evolving into strains with increased transmissibility, posing an emerging zoonotic threat with profound public health implications.”
For people H5N1 fatal, since 2003 at least 930 have caught and 463 have died, however H5N1 has yet to gain the ability to spread from person to person.
Virtually all of the people who caught H5N1 since 2003 caught it after coming in contact with infected poultry.
Recently, the British government announced the procurement of five million doses of an H5 vaccine in the case the virus develops the ability to spread between humans and potentially triggers a pandemic.
In the US, the Centre for Disease Control website now advises that people avoid “close or direct physical contact” with sick cats that may have been exposed to the virus.
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