Rechercher

Schweizerische Vereinigung für Kleintiermedizin
Association Suisse pour la Médecine des petits Animaux
Associazione Svizzera per la Medicina dei Piccoli Animali
Swiss Association for Small Animal Medicine

FECAVA Newsletter – February 2021

3. mars 2021

Corona from a veterinary virologist's point of view

At the end of 2019, a respiratory disease, Covid-19 emerged in Wuhan, China leading to respiratory problems in humans with mortality in mainly older people. It is caused by a coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, originally coming from bats. The virus has spread extremely fast all over the world within a few months. Some infected domesticated animals (in particular cats, ferrets, and mink) and zoo animals were observed and alarmed the veterinary practitioners. The mutated virus, which appears to have spread from animals to humans, has been detected retrospectively at a mink farm. Consequently, there was a risk that the mutants could be more virulent and pathogenic in man and could escape from the immunity induced by vaccines. This led to very severe measures (culling of mink on affected farms).

Diagnosis of infectious diseases in veterinary medicine is well-developed and testing large numbers of animals is not an issue. In human medicine, the diagnosis of Covid-19 in a large number of people was, in the beginning, a real burden. In addition, the differential diagnosis was not regularly performed resulting in the idea that there was only one pathogen causing respiratory problems. As a result, one can state that human medicine could learn from general practices in veterinary medicine.
Bio-security measures have already been used for a long time in livestock (poultry, pigs, cattle) and have been shown to be very effective. With Covid-19, it has become clear that humans were unprepared and have had much more problems behaving and following instructions than animals do. One may even predict that once Covid-19 is under control by the current vaccination strategy, all bio-security measures will disappear extremely fast in humans.

LONG LIVE THE FREEDOM OF HUMAN BEINGS…

Prof. Dr. Hans Nauwynck
Ghent University, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Laboratory of Virology

https://mailchi.mp/fecava/fecava-newsletter-the-pandemic-cant-stop-us-from-learning