Abstract
A novel coronavirus has been reported as the causative pathogen of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak in Wuhan city, China in December 2019. Due to the rapid spread of the virus worldwide, it has been announced as a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO). Hospitalized patients in Wuhan were associated with the Huanan seafood wholesale market where live animals, such as poultry, bats, snakes, frogs, rabbits, marmots, and hedgehogs are sold in that market which suggests a possible zoonotic infection. It was suggested that bat is the natural host of SARS-CoV-2, but the intermediate host is still unclear. It is essential to identify the potential intermediate host to interrupt the transmission chain of the virus. Pangolin is a highly suspected candidate as an intermediate host for SARS-CoV-2. Recently, SARS-CoV-2 infection has been reported in cats, dogs, tigers, and lions. More recently SARS-CoV-2 infection affected minks severely and zoonotic transfer with a variant SARS-CoV-2 strain evidenced in Denmark, Netherlands, USA, and Spain suggesting animal-to-human and animal-to-animal transmission within mink farms. Furthermore, experimental studies documented the susceptibility of different animal species to SARS-CoV-2, such as mice, golden hamsters, cats, ferrets, non-human primates, and treeshrews. It is also essential to know the possibility of infection for other animal species. This short review aims to provide an overview on the relation between severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection and animals.
Highlights
Several pneumonia cases with an unknown cause have been reported in Wuhan city, the capital of Hubei province, China on December 31st, 2019 [1, 2]
This review provides an overview of the current knowledge of the relation between SARS-CoV-2 infection and the role played by animals
It was speculated that SARS-CoV-2 was originated from bats and passes through an unknown intermediate host, which facilitated its transfer to humans
Summary
Several pneumonia cases with an unknown cause have been reported in Wuhan city, the capital of Hubei province, China on December 31st, 2019 [1, 2]. The disease was characterized by a respiratory disorder of variable degree of severity ranged from mild upper respiratory tract illness to acute respiratory distress syndrome and severe interstitial pneumonia [3]. The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses has named the virus as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) [5]. Due to the rapid spread of the virus in many countries worldwide, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced it as a pandemic on March 11th, 2020 [4]. The confirmed cases are 56,623,643 and mortalities are 1,355,963 in more than 220 countries, as of November 20th, 2020 [4]
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