Just when you thought this global pandemic couldn’t get any worse…

We hate to be the bearers of bad news, but it seems the fear of many pet owners is too real: good boys can get the coronavirus, too — though thankfully they probably are not able to transmit it to their humans!

We’ve known for a few weeks felines could get COVID-19; eight lions and tigers at the Bronx Zoo tested positive after showing symptoms in early April. (They are all doing fine now btw!) And last week two pet cats in New York City also tested positive. However, household pups were a different story — or so we thought.

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With testing so sparse in the US, it’s not a surprise not a lot of doctors have been willing to waste resources on dogs when it wasn’t clear whether they could even contract the virus. However, thanks to a new Duke University study on infected families, we have the country’s first known case of canine corona.

After three of the four members contracted the virus, the McLean family in North Carolina have been undergoing weekly nasal swabs and blood tests in an effort to collect data on how to fight the pandemic. Being thorough, researchers also tested the family’s pets: two dogs and a cat. While the other two were negative, an adorable pug named Winston became the first dog to test positive.

Mom Heather McLean told CNN the cat and other dog aren’t as consistently physically close to the family as Winston, who licks everything and is, in scientific terms, a real snuggle bug:

“Winston is much more affectionate and we hold them all the time. So if any of the animals were to have a positive viral test, it would be him.”

Winston did show some symptoms of the illness at the same time his family was sick. Son Ben McLean recalled:

“He had a small cough for a day or two right in the peak when all of us were sick and he didn’t eat his breakfast one morning. But we didn’t have any concrete, like, super alarming illnesses where we’re like, ‘We need to take him to the vet, he’s like really sick.'”

Now thankfully Winston is doing fine; unfortunately researchers can’t be certain whether his symptoms were related to the virus or another ailment. One piece of good news? He may have gotten it from the family, but he probably couldn’t give it back to them! Lead study investigator Chris Woods relayed:

“His amount of virus that we detected was very low, suggesting that he would not be a likely mechanism or vector of transmission of virus to either other animals or to, to humans in these households.”

Phew!

That’s in keeping with what we’ve heard previously about pets and the coronavirus.

William Schaffner, professor of preventative medicine and infectious disease at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, explained:

“We still don’t think this is common and we certainly don’t think it’s a major route of transmission in either direction. It’s not common for people to give it to their pets, nor has it been demonstrated ever that anyone’s ever gotten this virus from a pet.”

So bad news and good news for pet owners. Keep your good boys safe but do NOT be afraid of their love!

[Image via NBC News/YouTube.]

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