SARS‐CoV‐2 does not infect pigs, but this has to be verified regularly

Abstract

For successful xenotransplantation, freedom of the xenocraft donor from certain viral infections that may harm the organ recipient is important. A novel human coronavirus (CoV) with a respiratory tropism, designated as SARS-CoV-2, was first identified in January 2020 in China, but likely has been circulating unnoticed for some time before.Since then, this virus has reached most inhabited areas, resulting in a major global pandemic which is still ongoing. Due to a high number of subclinical infections, reinfections, geographic differences in diagnostic tests used, and differences in result reporting programs, the percentage of the population infected with SARS-CoV-2 at least once has been challenging to estimate. With continuous ongoing infections in people and an overall high viral load, it makes sense to look into possible viral spillover events in pets and farm animals, who are often in close contact with humans. The pig is currently the main species considered for xenotransplantation and hence there is interest to know if pigs can become infected with SARS-CoV-2 and if so what the infection dynamics may look like. This review article summarizes the latest research findings on this topic. It would appear that pigs can currently be considered a low risk species, and hence do not pose an immediate risk to the human population or xenotransplantation recipients per se. Monitoring the ever-changing SARS-CoV-2 variants appears important to recognize immediately should this change in the future.

Ultra-high field cardiac MRI in large animals and humans for translational cardiovascular research

“…However, it must be kept in mind that the vendor of the animals in our study was a vendor specialized in providing of laboratory animals and, thus, the risk of infection of an animal at the vendors' facility may be considered relatively low. However, our finding agrees with that of a recent review, which concludes that pigs are considered a low-risk species for Sars-Cov-2 spillover from pigs to man in xenotransplantation, but that monitoring of the risk appears essential because of continuous mutations of the virus ( 88 ).…”

Five Things Clinicians Need to Know About Zoonotic Viral Spillover and Spillback

“…44,45 Current evidence suggests that SARS-CoV-2 has adapted to new mink and white tail deer hosts and at least some mink-associated novel variants are capable of spilling back to humans. 46 Although current evidence suggests that pigs 47,48,49,50,51,52,53 and cattle 54,55,56 are not routinely susceptible to infection with circulating strains of SAR-CoV-2, were SARS-CoV-2 strains to adapt to infect livestock, other circulating strains of enzootic coronaviruses in livestock might increase the risk of novel virus generation through recombination. When confronted with a patient with unexplained illness and negative diagnostic tests, clinicians are wise to ask questions about a patient's exposure to animals and to consider animal pathogen involvement in the patient's signs and symptoms.…”

Porcine respiratory disease complex: Dynamics of polymicrobial infections and management strategies after the introduction of the African swine fever

“…Several factors can influence on the PRDC prevalence, including a remarkably lower number of the pig population in the affected area, the closing of pig farms due to ASF depopulation, and an improvement of the employed biosecurity program. The worldwide epidemic outbreak of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) also affected pig producers, both directly and indirectly (8)(9)(10)(11)(12). As a result, biosecurity measures have been widely improved in livestock animal production.…”