Ferrets and COVID-19 vaccines

[Luckee legs 422]

Hi to all,

I read that ferrets were one of the animal models being used to look at the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines, it surprised me as, although I know they are a key lab animal in flu vaccines, I remember reading that they are not susceptible. Not much literature out there but one research article looking at all lab animals "found that SARS-CoV-2 replicates poorly in dogs, pigs, chickens, and ducks, but ferrets and cats are permissive to infection. We found experimentally that cats are susceptible to airborne infection."  However, its not bad news for us owners and our ferrets, I am not a virologist so I am just summarising the text,  but, basically the virus replicates in ferret respiratory tracts, they get ill and show a temperature rise, crucially the virus doesnt replicate in their lungs and the ferrets survive.  In that study cats were the only animal that could pass the virus on, which makes the reports of zoo cats, concern about tigers in India etc getting the disease understandable.  We can guess that general public is OK with ferrets as lab animals but not cats. Anyway if you see reports of ferrets used in vaccine safety tests it doesnt mean they are vulnerable like they are to human flu