A Monkeypox update from the ECDC in Europe today recommends quarantining Monkeypox patients AND their mammalian pets.
Below is a translation of two paragraphs from an article in El Pais about the ECDC Monkeypox quarantine recommendations:
<Quote> The ECDC recommends that measures be taken so that all mammalian pets that have been in contact with the positive cases and their close contacts “are quarantined and tested”. For their part, “rodents should ideally be isolated in monitored spaces” with air flow control and that ensure their well-being, such as laboratories, government spaces, kennels or animal protection organization units. There they must be subjected to PCR tests before the end of the quarantine, while “euthanasia should only be considered when it is not possible” to apply these measures.
There is a potential risk of transmission from people to animals, so close collaboration between health and veterinary authorities is necessary, working from a global health perspective to care for exposed pets,” the document states. This highlights that the greatest risk occurs with domestic rodents, such as hamsters and different types of rats, and that this jump, although very unlikely, “can cause the virus to establish itself in European wildlife and convert Monkeypox into an endemic zoonotic disease”. Rodents are known to be a prominent reservoir of this virus in Africa. <Unquote>
Below is the paragraph from the ECDC document that El Pais is referring to. It’s taken from this document, republished below
The full updated ECDC Monkeypox document can be downloaded here
