Monkeypox patients' pets could be quarantined or even culled according to experts.
The latest guidance released by European health authorities recommends household rodents – as these are the most susceptible to the disease – such as mice, guinea pigs, hamsters and gerbils should be isolated in government laboratories. Culling has been deemed a last-resort measure, where monitored isolation and regular testing is impractical, although it has been mooted as a way of halting the disease’s progress in regions affected.
The European Centre for Disease Control said: “Rodent pets should ideally be isolated in monitored facilities, complying with respiratory isolation (eg. a laboratory) and animal welfare conditions (e.g. government facilities, kennels or animal welfare organisations), and tested (by PCR) for exposure before quarantine ends."
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“Euthanasia should only be a last resort reserved to situations where testing and/or isolation are not feasible.”
There have been 90 reported cases of monkeypox in the UK, 85 of which are in England, while 344 suspected or confirmed cases have been reported in more than 20 countries worldwide, the Mirror reports.
While rodents are particularly at risk, other domesticated pets such as dogs and cats should also be kept indoors, although they are less vulnerable to the double-stranded DNA disease which is said to have originated from rodents in west and central Africa, although it was first identified in 1958 by Danish virologist Preben von Magnus in crab-eating macaques monkeys which were being used as lab animals.
The UK Government is set to publish advice in the coming days, urging monkeypox patients to keep their distance from animals and avoid close contact with them.
Professor David Robertson, of the Glasgow Centre for Virus Research, revealed in the Telegraph that although the threat of monkeypox jumping from humans to pets to wildlife is low, it is a “valid concern”.
He said: “Rabbits and mice would be ones to watch, as they’re likely to be kept as pets.
“This virus does have quite a wide host range which is always worrying in terms of potential to establish in a new host species… it would seem sensible to monitor any animals/pets that infected people are in contact with.”
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