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Monkeypox patients may need to isolate cats and dogs as virus could jump to new animals

Cats, dogs and rabbits may need to be put into isolation if their owner has monkeypox as an expert believes the virus could soon evolve to be able to infect more animals.

Dave King/Dorling KindersleyRabbits - Dave King/Dorling Kindersley

The natural animal reservoir of monkeypox is widely believed to be rodents – including rats and squirrels – and Prof Francois Balloux, director of the UCL Genetics Institute, believes the virus may be poised to make the jump into other species.

He said that if monkeypox was to circulate extensively outside of Africa, as it currently is, then he “wouldn’t exclude the possibility” that it will find a home in another group of animals, leading to a secondary reservoir of disease.

“It may not even need to evolve significantly to do so,” he told The Telegraph.

Official guidance from British health authorities is that pet rodents (gerbils, guinea pigs, hamsters etc) of monkeypox cases must be isolated in a secure location, such as a government lab, for three weeks.

This is the human incubation period for the disease and the animal must test negative via PCR before it can be released from quarantine. There are an estimated two million pet rodents in Britain.

Wendi Shepherd, monkeypox incident director at the UK Health Security Agency, called the move “a precautionary measure”.

Other pets can be isolated away from an infected person at home as long as vets can access the animal safely.

However, this would probably change if evidence emerged that the virus could infect these animals, which Prof Balloux says may be possible with very little extra adaptation.

Rabbits at highest risk

Dr Amr Bayoumy, a lecturer in biosciences at the University of Coventry, told The Telegraph that pet rabbits may be at the highest risk.

"We know that rabbits are highly susceptible to monkeypox virus infection and they can show symptoms such as fever, rash, poor appetite and loss of weight, and young rabbits can transmit the virus to other rabbits," he said.

"It is not clear what role rabbits may have in transmitting the infection to humans. Therefore, people who have pet rabbits must be careful."

Smaller viruses, such as coronaviruses, mutate much quicker than monkeypox, but the monkeypox virus is about 10 times as big and so the mutation rate is roughly the same, Prof Balloux said.

He is a senior author on a new study, published in Nature Communications, which looked at how another familiar virus, Sars-Cov-2 which causes Covid-19, behaved in animals.

Since the coronavirus emerged and spread around the world it has also transferred into various species, notably mink and deer, where it has remained. Prof Balloux said the virus now “cannot be realistically eradicated” from these animals.

Some experts were concerned that this may force the virus to mutate, becoming potentially more dangerous, whether that is via increased transmissibility or higher virulence.

But the study found that sustained infection and transmission in these animals has not led to any substantial changes in the virus itself, helping ease any concerns.

“At that stage, there is no evidence that the limited genetic adaptation to deer will lead to lineages that are either more transmissible or more virulent in humans,” Prof Balloux said of coronavirus.