The feline coronavirus pandemic has begun: 300,000 cats have died in Cyprus
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World media are reporting that Cyprus is becoming an “island of dead cats”: an outbreak of feline coronavirus has claimed 300,000 four-legged lives, that is, every third cat on the island. The virus can spread to other countries (there is evidence of such cases in Israel and Turkey). Experts warn that the casualties will be colossal. The virus has already reached Israel and is about to come to Britain.
Since January, both stray and domestic cats have died from feline infectious peritonitis (FIPV), caused by a strain of the coronavirus. Local veterinarians are reporting an alarming rise in FIPV cases, which began in the Cypriot capital Nicosia in January and spread across the island within three to four months.
Professor Daniel Gunn-Moore, a feline medicine specialist at the University of Edinburgh, told the Telegraph newspaper that an outbreak of this magnitude “has never been seen” and that there are increasing reports of cat corpses on the streets, as well as suspicions that it could be a new, more deadly strain of FIPV. According to Cypriot animal rights activists, at least 300,000 cats have died in Cyprus (the number of cats on the island is estimated at about a million individuals). But with so many homeless animals living in Cyprus, diagnosing and documenting every infection is next to impossible.
The development of the disease can be stopped with the help of two drugs, but there are problems. One of them is the biological drug remdesivir, the second is similar to it GS-441524. Although these drugs are approved for use in animals in the UK and for import into Cyprus, they are expensive, ranging from £2,500 to £6,000 for a 3-4kg cat. There is also a potential option – a cheaper antiviral drug used to treat COVID-19 in humans, molnupiravir. However, a veterinary association’s application for permission to treat cats was rejected in May because the government said human drugs could not be imported for veterinary use.
Local veterinarians are calling on the government to provide cats with treatment and vaccinations. But while some cat owners buy medicines for their own and homeless cats at their own expense, a black market of cheap unlicensed drugs has even appeared in Cyprus.
“Coronavirus feline infectious peritonitis FIPV for many years remained a deadly threat to felines,” says Dmitry Prus, a well-known geneticist from the United States. – Alas, attempts to develop a vaccine failed due to problems with ADE (the effect of antibody-enhancement of infection – the animal dies when re-infected. – Auth.), and there were no effective drugs. America’s leading feline veterinarian, Niels Pedersen of the University of California, Davis, has identified two promising anti-coronavirus drugs. One of them, GS-441524, was an early version of remdesivir, an intravenous covid drug famous at the beginning of the pandemic. Another, GC376, has also had success against covid but has not been approved for use in humans.
Against FIPV in cats, these drugs are significantly more effective than against the related virus SARS-CoV-2 in humans, and the reason here is most likely not in the molecular composition of the viruses, but in the protracted nature of the disease in cats (infectious peritonitis lasts for weeks and even months , and a long course of treatment gradually yields results). Alas, all the successes of veterinary trials failed to help veterinarians treat cats, as the development companies categorically refused to allow the veterinary use of drugs!
Those who are familiar with the pharmaceutical business and the organization of clinical trials will hardly be surprised by such a terrible state of affairs. When drugs have not yet been approved for use in humans and further clinical trials are ahead, then there is a place for fear that veterinarians will find any problems, any side effects, due to which the FDA (US Food and Drug Safety Agency) will stop or complicate human trials. As a rule, it is believed that the veterinary market is small and it is impossible to risk a large medical market for it. That’s when the medicine is approved for people, then the turn will come for the animals …
Chinese pharmaceutical companies have already taken advantage of this situation and started selling illegal GS-441524 and GC376 in unlabeled ampoules for $5,000–10,000 per course. Veterinarians do not have the right to inject them, but usually prescribe sedatives to cat owners so that the cats do not resist and let the owners themselves inject. Or maybe if a wave of viral peritonitis affects hundreds of millions of cats, then the increased size of the market will force the developers of already tested drugs to change their minds?
“If we talk about feline coronaviruses, then for animals these are quite serious things. They affect the lungs, intestines and cause almost one hundred percent mortality. For example, there is a dry form of feline coronavirus infection – the cat dries up and dies slowly, over several months. Such an animal is given a PCR test, and then an analysis for antibodies, and if they are positive, consider the animal doomed, and the owner decides whether to keep it on or not. In another form, feline peritonitis develops, and the animal also dies. In addition, presumably, there is an ocular form of coronavirus that necrotizes corneal tissue. But there are versions that this virus only works together with herpes and mycoplasma. There is a vaccine for feline coronavirus, but it is strange and unpopular. Almost no one vaccinates their pets, because it is known that after vaccination the animal can get sick, ”a veterinarian named Alexander told MK.
Newspaper headline:
Covid is back for cats
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