Shortages of coronavirus tests & related supplies have left some of the U.S.A.’s most vulnerable people at risk, so when the news came out a tiger at the Bronx Zoo tested positive for Covid-19, people had some questions.
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A Wired report released Sunday helped explain how & why this happened.
After several big cats started wheezing & neglecting meals at the end of March Bronx Zoo veterinarians were worried, & ran lots of tests with no result. And while it wasn’t originally thought to be the cause, with so many cases of Covid-19 in the population around the zoo, they ran a test just in case.
The veterinary diagnosticians involved are quick to point out that the tests for the tiger were developed specifically in their labs to use on animals, so Nadia was not given a test meant for a human. And while it’s an unexpected development, the tiger’s infection is relevant for scientists trying to understand Covid-19. “Since the beginning, we’ve known that this is a disease that started off in animals and spilled over to people,” says Casey Barton Behravesh, the director of the One Health office for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. “It’ll be important for people working on human health and animal health issues to exchange information.”
Read more on Wired Magazine
Tiger Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay
Source: neatorama