Veterinary services in Cyprus have received a first batch of anti-Covid pills, from a stockpile originally meant for humans, as efforts intensify to stop the spread of a virulent strain of feline coronavirus that has killed thousands of cats.
The island’s health ministry began discharging the treatment on 8 August – long celebrated as International Cat Day – in what is hoped will be the beginning of the end of the disease that has struck the Mediterranean country’s feline population.
Experts at the university of Edinburgh, investigating the outbreak in collaboration with the PVA, found that within 12 weeks the number of FIP cases confirmed by PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests rose 20-fold compared with the previous year.
Dr Charalampos Attipa, senior lecturer in veterinary clinical pathology, who is heading the University of Edinburgh team, said: “Our studies are very much focused on identifying the possible mutation that has led to this highly virulent FCoV strain.”
The island’s Cat Protection and Welfare Society (PAWS) recently made the dramatic claim that about 300,000 felines, both domesticated and stray, had perished as a result of galloping FIP transmission rates since January.
“It’s just not true that we are an island of dead cats, but what is happening is very serious,” said the PVA president, Nektaria Ioannou Arsenoglou, adding that afflicted animals could be nursed back to health in both the “wet” and “dry” forms of the illness if given the proper treatment.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Veterinary services in Cyprus have received a first batch of anti-Covid pills, from a stockpile originally meant for humans, as efforts intensify to stop the spread of a virulent strain of feline coronavirus that has killed thousands of cats.
The island’s health ministry began discharging the treatment on 8 August – long celebrated as International Cat Day – in what is hoped will be the beginning of the end of the disease that has struck the Mediterranean country’s feline population.
Experts at the university of Edinburgh, investigating the outbreak in collaboration with the PVA, found that within 12 weeks the number of FIP cases confirmed by PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests rose 20-fold compared with the previous year.
Dr Charalampos Attipa, senior lecturer in veterinary clinical pathology, who is heading the University of Edinburgh team, said: “Our studies are very much focused on identifying the possible mutation that has led to this highly virulent FCoV strain.”
The island’s Cat Protection and Welfare Society (PAWS) recently made the dramatic claim that about 300,000 felines, both domesticated and stray, had perished as a result of galloping FIP transmission rates since January.
“It’s just not true that we are an island of dead cats, but what is happening is very serious,” said the PVA president, Nektaria Ioannou Arsenoglou, adding that afflicted animals could be nursed back to health in both the “wet” and “dry” forms of the illness if given the proper treatment.
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