With all the talk about the big international push to develop an effective and approved human vaccine against Covid-19, it is nice to read that in parallel at least one company is developing a coronavirus vaccine for cats.
It is exclusively for veterinary use. The company is called Applied DNA Sciences. Their headquarters are in New York, USA. Trials are to begin soon and they will be conducted in collaboration with a biotechnology firm, Evvivax SRL. This firm is based, as far as I know, in Rome, Italy. Thirty cats are to be inoculated as part of its pilot phase and they will be monitored for six months. In July, Applied DNA Sciences claimed that five of their vaccine candidates had exhibited strong antibody responses at low doses using mice.
I think the news is quite important because there is an emerging narrative that domestic cats might become a reservoir for the virus although at present there is no strong evidence that they can transmit the virus to people. I feel that in the future we will ascertain that and therefore a vaccine such as those being developed may become more important going forward.
