The first great apes were vaccinated against COVID-19 at the San Diego Zoo in California, with a vaccine specially developed for animals.
The zoo’s operator, the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, has confirmed this on Twitter. “The vaccine has been specially developed for animals”, he said. According to “National Geographic“Four orangutans and five bonobos have been vaccinated and there will be four more monkeys on the lead shortly. The animals received their second dose after three weeks.
The animals are doing well and have shown no adverse reactions to the vaccine, a Wildlife Alliance spokeswoman told CNN. Previously, eight gorillas at the zoo had tested positive for COVID-19 in January, making them the first great apes in the world to have a positive COVID-19 test. However, the symptoms of the infection were mild and limited to coughing, constipation and fatigue. Despite the zoo’s security measures, the animals were suspected to have been infected by an employee with asymptomatic COVID-19 contamination.
An orangutan named Karen was the first in the world to undergo open-heart surgery in 1994, and has now made medical history again by being one of the first great apes to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.
Worldwide, COVID-19 infections have been identified in tigers, lions, mink, snow leopards, cougars, ferrets, dogs and domestic cats, but the fact that great apes are susceptible to COVID-19 is of particular concern to scientists. There are currently fewer than 5,000 gorillas in the wild, and because they live in close-knit family groups, researchers are concerned that if a gorilla contracts COVID-19, the infection could spread quickly and put already endangered populations at risk.
More than a year after the pandemic is still there little known about the consequences of the virus for animals. In many cases, the veterinary community needs to rely on limited datasets and she must learn what she can do from individual cases and sporadic outbreaks in a handful of species.
After the first dog tested positive for the virus, in Hong Kong in February 2020, veterinary pharmaceutical company Zoetis began developing a COVID-19 vaccine for dogs and cats. In October, Zoetis was confident it was safe and effective for both species. Although the vaccine had only been tested on cats and dogs, the zoo decided that vaccinating the great apes was worth the risk.
Other US zoos have also requested doses of the COVID-19 vaccine for their great apes, said Christina Lood, a spokesperson for Zoetis, and the company expects to have more vaccines available by June. As more monkeys receive the vaccine and therefore more data becomes available, our understanding of how effective the vaccine is in monkeys will increase.
A win for science: our partners at @Sweetis, a veterinary pharmaceutical company, developed a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) that we used to vaccinate great apes at the Zoo. The vaccine was created specifically for animals. @NatGeo https://t.co/ZpM5QVD4pl
— San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance (@sandiegozoo) March 5, 2021
The @sandiegozoo
has given four orangutans and five bonobos an experimental coronavirus vaccine after several apes contracted COVID-19 in January.Learn more about the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance: https://t.co/fsFy6rzzpI pic.twitter.com/eykZpspyVr
— Cheddar???? (@cheddar) March 6, 2021
The first great apes were vaccinated against Covid-19 in the San Diego Zoo in the US state of California. #Corona #Vaccinationhttps://t.co/HCbVdd5rRk
– The news (@DLFNachrichten) March 6, 2021
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