True reason veterinarian gave tiger a Covid-19 test

Nadia is cough. Specifically a dry cough, it was not just her. A four-year-old Malay tiger lives at the Bronx Zoo exhibit with her sister Azul, who began coughing at the end of March. Overall, seven large cats in the zoo, two Amur tigers and three African lions in addition to Nadia and Azul appeared sick. They neglected to eat. They wheeze. And they worried their guards. Fear of spread Coronavirus The zoo was closed to the public from mid-March, but key staff members continued to take care of the animals. They wanted to find the cause of Nadia’s malaise.

“Because Nadia was not approaching and was getting a bit worse, he was anesthetized to treat her,” says Veterinarian Paul Cole of the Bronx Zoo. “We did x-rays and ultrasonography. We did the blood work. We performed a lot of tests and created a panel of infections in regular domestic cats.” COVID-19 The pandemic devastated people living in the area around the zoo. Initially it was not considered a criminal. After all, it was not known that animals would get the disease in the United States. It was not even clear if a tiger could shrink it. However, with so many cases occurring in the city, the team decided to test SARS-Cov-2, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19.

Within a few days, Nadia tested positive and became the first animal in North America. The news that New York tigers caught the coronavirus was striking. Who knew that the tiger was tested so quickly?

While New York has the highest number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in the world, Lack of testingMost people who experience, and symptoms, live uncertainly. Sick people who do not need to be hospitalized immediately are encouraged to stay home, assume they are infected, and wait for things. This is a frightening and frightening experience. Therefore, the news that tigers can definitely get the test in some way swiftly, as the attention and attention to one animal was so sharply contrasted with what many New Yorkers ignored, sparked resentment. Was.

The relevant veterinary diagnostician will immediately point out that Nadia was not given any human tests because the tiger test was developed specifically in the laboratory for animal testing. And that’s an unexpected advance, but tiger transmission is important for scientists trying to understand Covid-19. “From the beginning, we knew that this started with animals and was a disease that had spread to people,” says Casey Barton Behravesh, director of the National Center for Emerging Medicine at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. And zoonotic infections. “Exchanging information is important for those who address human and animal health issues.”

The exact origin of the coronavirus responsible for Covid-19 is not yet known, but it is believed that it originated in bats and subsequently jumped to humans through the Chinese market, which specializes in fish and meat, including live animals. You. It is a disease, at its most basic level, that both animal and human health professionals need to understand. Testing tigers may sound like a weird detour, but it is closely tied to efforts to learn how Covid-19 affects humans and animals. This is especially true in the Bronx Zoo theory, as zookeepers may have accidentally infected Nadia. Several dogs in Hong Kong, cats in Hong Kong, and cats in Belgium have been reported to be Covid-19 positive after human exposure, but it is not easy or common for humans to transmit the infection. Looking back on the animal world, which is not yet clear, or what it means.

As tiger happiness is now embroiled in a public health crisis, there are plans to conduct contact tracking in Nadia. “The New York City Health Authority is investigating the tiger situation more aggressively,” says Burton Belavesh.

“The Ministry of Health will investigate. Currently, this appears to be a transmission from humans to cats, but how the transmission occurred is something we still need to learn.” Gallahue adds: The ministry interviews zoo staff to determine the level of contact between humans and animals and to try to determine when those contacts occurred. As with this pandemic, this is an unprecedented survey.

“This is a disease that nobody knows. No one has spent his life researching it. There is no laboratory dedicated to the disease. He is a wild animal veterinarian who tested samples of Nadia Sam Thunder needs to work together and cooperate across all countries, countries and disciplines to get the answers needed to fight this virus effectively and efficiently: the University of Illinois Veterinary Diagnostics Laboratory. We also have the opportunity to develop vaccines, perform additional tests, and learn more about how this virus replicates and when it mutates. “

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Nadia has indeed tested three times with Covid-19.

After she was knocked out peacefully, the Bronx Zoo collected samples from her nostrils, behind her throat, and from her trachea. The samples were then sent to Cornell University and the University of Illinois Veterinary Medicine Laboratory, where they were immediately processed.

“We used molecular tests similar to human tests,” says Veterinary Virologist Ray One, who created the tests used in Nadia’s sample at the University of Illinois. (When asked if his test would work on human and animal samples, he said that it was theoretically possible, but “policies have allowed us to test humans. In addition to Nadia, the King’s lab also has gorillas, chimpanzees, cats, dogs, and armadillos. “But we only got positive from the tiger,” he says.