Chung Min-su, who has three bichon frise dogs at home, began to worry about the possibility of her pets catching COVID-19 after hearing news last week that a dog had tested positive for the new coronavirus in Hong Kong. The outbreak has now affected more than 7,000 people in South Korea.
“I am more cautious when I am with my dogs in an enclosed space with other people, like in an elevator,” Chung said. “When I walk my dogs outside, they sniff around everywhere, and I freak out when they go near where people spit.”
On Wednesday, Hong Kong’s Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department confirmed that a dog repeatedly tested as a weak positive for the coronavirus. The dog did not show any symptoms.
The news from Hong Kong quickly spread in Korea, where more than 20 percent of households include pets.
Last week, the city of Seongnam in Gyeonggi Province closed dog parks as a precaution.
“We wanted to eliminate all possibilities of the virus spreading, although it was not confirmed that the virus could spread among dogs,” an official from Seongnam told The Korea Herald.
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A banner put up by the city government in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, reads that the dog park will be temporarily closed due to COVID-19, from March 2 until the situation is resolved. (Park Yuna/The Korea Herald) |
Kwon Hei-mi, a resident of Seongnam, comes out to walk her golden retriever mix as often as possible after the dog parks were shut down and “pet kindergartens” refused to accept any new dogs for the time being.
“There is no place for my dog to play at the moment. I am worried because she has so much energy,” Kwon said, barely able to control her dog on the leash. “I hope this situation resolves soon. What I’m worried about now is that people will (think of dogs as a potential source of infection).”
Dear Pet, an online pet goods seller, is seeing increased demand for dog masks since the report came out from Hong Kong. “Sales of the dog masks rose over the past two weeks after the news report,” said Kim Yoo-jin, CEO of the company.
The owner of Hudog, a dog cafe in Seongnam, said the number of customers has declined more than 50 percent recently.
“It is an emergency situation for me. People rarely visit the cafe even on weekends,” the owner, who declined to give her name, told The Korea Herald.
However, experts say it is too early to draw a conclusion about COVID-19 in animals.
“There has been only one case of pet infection so far, so it is too early to generalize the issue. There are neither experimental results nor research on novel coronavirus transmission from humans to pets yet,” said Choi In-soo, a professor at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Konkuk University. “And it is rare that viruses that are transmitted among animals get passed to humans and vice versa, so you don’t have to worry about it too much.”
Park Jeong-eun, a professor at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Chungnam National University, said while the possibility of a viral variant does exist, viral transmission between humans and pets is “very unlikely.”
“We cannot definitively say anything about the novel coronavirus yet, but it is not right to say pets are (a source of infection) at this moment because of the lone case in Hong Kong.”
By Park Yuna (
yunapark@heraldcorp.com)
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