Conclusion: It appears that a person could get ebola from her cat or dog but please read on..
Is ebola a zoonotic disease? If it is, it may have a serious impact on the welfare of domestic cats anywhere. I ask because you have probably read that the dog companion, Excalibur, of the Spanish nurse who contracted Ebola was put down and incinerated as he was considered a health risk. Excalibur was destroyed despite a petition of 350,000 people around the world begging the authorities to reconsider their decision.
The nurse, Teresa Romero, 44, was the first person outside of Africa to get the killer disease. As I understand it, about 50% of people who get ebola die from it. There is no cure.
There was no attempt to place the dog into quarantine to see if ebola developed in him thereby confirming a need to euthanise. It was all done in a panic and with a disregard for animal welfare and the views of many others. Other people say the decision to kill the dog was sensible.
Madrid’s regional government obtained a court order to kill the dog. They say that available scientific information cannot rule out the risk of contagion meaning the transmission of ebola from dogs to people.
To date there have been no human ebola infections linked to dogs we are told but how do people know for sure? Dogs are “thought” to contract ebola without symptoms (asymptomatic). If this is true, quarantine would not be beneficial because a dog could just be a carrier without suffering from the disease him/herself.
During an outbreak of ebola in Gabon in 2001-2, 337 dogs were tested and up to 25% had antibodies to the disease meaning they had been exposed to it and the body had created protection.
Ben Neuman a University of Reading virologist says:
“Unlike most viruses, ebola really gets around. It can infect a wide range of animals including bats, rodents, monkeys, apes and a kind of tiny antelope…”
Therefore, we know ebola can infect animals. We don’t know for absolute certainty if it can be transmitted from animals to people, as far as I know (wrong? Please correct me and see CDC statement below).
We don’t know if people can give it to animals but is seems possible or probable. That gap in knowledge needs to be filled I believe. However, if there is a possibility, and what Ben Neuman says indicates that there is, ebola may be zoonotic and therefore it could be transmitted from dogs and cats to people and vice versa.
In fact CDC (USA agency) states on their website:
….researchers have hypothesized that the first patient becomes infected through contact with an infected animal
Chris Kilham writing on Fox news states:
health officials…are certain that it is zoonotic
This is potentially bad news for cats. However, Dee (a regular to PoC) writes in a comment:
According to this week’s Time Magazine, cats are suspected of having immunity to Ebola. This seems to be based on the fact that no cat, even in the wild in Africa, has ever presented with the virus.
We should recognize that the spread of the disease in Sierra Leone is due to a lack of education and poor health care services in that country – a human generated problem in part due to civil war. Also, the international community has been too slow to respond in providing aid on the ground.
There is argument for a lock-down on travel from West Africa to prevent this killer disease spreading to other countries.
Photo credit: NIAID
Dee, could you tell me where you got that thought from.
The key to the entire transmission of Ebola is that the infected animal or human must have symptoms in order to spread.
I think dogs are being thrown under the bus considering there has only been one study done years ago.
This is from Time also:
To date, there is no documented case of Ebola spreading to people from dogs or dogs to people, and only one study, carried out by the CDC, looks at whether dogs can get Ebola at all. This research into the prevalence of Ebola-virus antibodies in dogs from regions of Gabon affected by the 2001–2002 outbreak showed that “dogs can be infected by Ebola virus” but exhibit no symptoms and the infection eventually clears.
The researchers concluded that “dogs could be a potential source of human Ebola outbreaks and of virus spread during human outbreaks,” but they did not test their hypothesis that human infection could occur through licking, biting or grooming. Instead, the study assumed dogs would transmit the infection in the same way as other animals observed in experiments; those animals excreted viral particles (in saliva, urine, feces) for a short period before the virus was cleared. David Moore, an expert in infectious diseases from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said that since no dogs showed symptoms of the Ebola virus “there is absolutely no evidence to support a role for dogs in transmission.”
Immunity must the case with cats. How many cats, especially in the wild, must have feasted on infected mammals and birds? Yet, no cases of the virus ever appeared.
Let’s hear it for the felines!
Excellent comment. Thanks a lot Dee. It seems that of the companion animals dogs are at risk and a risk. I’ll add your comment to the page.
According to this week’s Time Magazine, cats are suspected of having immunity to Ebola. This seems to be based on the fact that no cat, even in the wild in Africa, has ever presented with the virus.
Also of interest was that the virus can only be transmitted from human to human when the infected one has symptoms. In other words, it can’t be transmitted if it is just laying dormant. This is the first time I’ve ever heard of any virus not being contagious unless symptoms are present. That’s somewhat reassuring.