Susceptibility of ferrets, cats, dogs, and different domestic animals to SARS-coronavirus-2

Hualan Chen

Ten outbred domestic juvenile cats (aged between 70 days and three months) and eight outbred subadult cats (aged 6-9 months) obtained from the National Engineering Research Center of To investigate the transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 in cats, six cats were inoculated intranasally with 10 5 PFU of CTan-H and each animal was placed in a separate cage within an isolator. A similar-aged naive cat was then placed in each cage adjacent to the one that held the virus-inoculated cat. Feces were collected on days 3, 5, 7, and 9 p.i. from the big cats, and nasal washes were collected from the juvenile cats for viral RNA detection or virus titration. One pair and two pairs of the subadult cats were euthanized on days 11 and 12 p.i., respectively, and their organs, including lungs, tracheas, nasal turbinates, soft palates, brains, hearts, submaxillary lymph nodes, tonsils, kidneys, spleens, livers, pancreas, and small intestines, were collected for viral RNA detection and virus titration. Sera were collected and antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 were detected by using the Double Antigen Sandwich ELISA kit (ProtTech, Luoyang, China) and a neutralization assay.