New York cats become first US pets to contract coronavirus
NEW YORK, United States — Two cats in New York have become the first pets in the United States to test positive for the new coronavirus, officials said Wednesday.
The cats live in separate areas of New York state, America's COVID-19 epicenter, the Department of Agriculture and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a joint statement.
"Both had mild respiratory illness and are expected to make a full recovery," they said.
The owner of one of the cats had earlier tested positive for the virus before their feline pet started showing symptoms, according to the officials.
The other cat lives in a household where no members were confirmed to be ill with COVID-19.
"The virus may have been transmitted to this cat by mildly ill or asymptomatic household members or through contact with an infected person outside its home," said the statement.
Another cat in the same house has not shown signs of having the illness, the press release added.
The departments stressed that while public health officials are still studying COVID-19's impact on animals "there is no evidence that pets play a role in spreading the virus in the United States."
Health officials recommend that cats and dogs socially isolate while they learn more about how the virus infects pets.
The CDC advises that cats be kept indoors when possible to avoid them interacting with other animals or humans.
It says that dogs should be kept on a leash while outside and should avoid busy areas such as dog parks.
The CDC also advises people who might have COVID-19 to avoid physical contact with their pet.
Earlier this month, a tiger at New York's Bronx Zoo was confirmed to have been infected by a caretaker who was asymptomatic at the time.
In late March a pet cat was discovered infected with the novel coronavirus in Belgium, following similar cases in Hong Kong where two dogs tested positive.
They were believed to have contracted the virus from the people they live with.
More than 15,000 people have been killed by COVID-19 in New York state.
Follow this page for updates on a mysterious pneumonia outbreak that has struck dozens of people in China.
New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says on Sunday that he had contracted COVID-19, testing positive at a key point in his flailing campaign for re-election.
Hipkins saYS on his official social media feed that he would need to isolate for up to five days -- less than two weeks before his country's general election.
The leader of the centre-left Labour Party said he started to experience cold symptoms on Saturday and had cancelled most of his weekend engagements. — AFP
The World Health Organization and US health authorities say Friday they are closely monitoring a new variant of COVID-19, although the potential impact of BA.2.86 is currently unknown.
The WHO classified the new variant as one under surveillance "due to the large number (more than 30) of spike gene mutations it carries", it wrote in a bulletin about the pandemic late Thursday.
So far, the variant has only been detected in Israel, Denmark and the United States. — AFP
The World Health Organization says on Friday that the number of new COVID-19 cases reported worldwide rose by 80% in the last month, days after designating a new "variant of interest".
The WHO declared in May that Covid is no longer a global health emergency, but has warned that the virus will continue to circulate and mutate, causing occasional spikes in infections, hospitalisations and deaths.
In its weekly update, the UN agency said that nations reported nearly 1.5 million new cases from July 10 to August 6, an 80% increase compared to the previous 28 days. — AFP
The head of US intelligence says that there was no evidence that the COVID-19 virus was created in the Chinese government's Wuhan research lab.
In a declassified report, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) says they had no information backing recent claims that three scientists at the lab were some of the very first infected with COVID-19 and may have created the virus themselves.
Drawing on intelligence collected by various member agencies of the US intelligence community (IC), the ODNI report says some scientists at the Wuhan lab had done genetic engineering of coronaviruses similar to COVID-19. — AFP
Boris Johnson deliberately misled MPs over Covid lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street when he was prime minister, a UK parliament committee ruled on Thursday.
The cross-party Privileges Committee said Johnson, 58, would have been suspended as an MP for 90 days for "repeated contempts (of parliament) and for seeking to undermine the parliamentary process".
But he avoided any formal sanction by his peers in the House of Commons by resigning as an MP last week.
In his resignation statement last Friday, Johnson pre-empted publication of the committee's conclusions, claiming a political stitch-up, even though the body has a majority from his own party.
He was unrepentant again on Thursday, accusing the committee of being "anti-democratic... to bring about what is intended to be the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination".
Calling it "beneath contempt", he said it was "for the people of this to decide who sits in parliament, not Harriet Harman", the veteran opposition Labour MP who chaired the seven-person committee. — AFP
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