A study finds cats are susceptible to the new coronavirus, but it’s unclear whether they can infect people.Credit: Manan Vatsyayana/AFP/Getty

Cats susceptible to coronavirus — dogs, not so much

Cats can be infected with the coronavirus that causes COVID‑19, and can spread it to other cats, but dogs are not really susceptible, finds a preprint study by researchers in China. They also conclude that chickens, pigs and ducks are not likely to catch the virus.

The team, led by virologist Bu Zhigao at Harbin Veterinary Research Institute, introduced the SARS-CoV-2 virus into the noses of five domestic cats. When two of the animals were euthanized six days later, the researchers found viral RNA and infectious virus particles in their upper respiratory tracts (J. Shi et al. Preprint at bioRxiv http://doi.org/drbw; 2020).

The other three cats were put in cages next to uninfected felines. The team later detected viral RNA in one of these exposed cats, which suggests that it caught the virus from droplets breathed out by the infected cats. All four cats also produced antibodies against SARS-CoV-2.

Other scientists say the results, which have not been peer-reviewed, came from a small number of animals given high doses of the virus in the lab, and do not represent real-life interactions between people and their pets. There is no direct evidence that the infected cats secreted enough coronavirus to pass it to people, says virologist Linda Saif at the Ohio State University in Wooster.

Pandemic delays major climate meeting

International climate talks scheduled for November in Glasgow, UK, have been postponed until 2021 as a result of the ongoing coronavirus crisis, United Nations officials announced on 1 April.

The climate meeting, known as COP26 — the 26th annual conference of the parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change — was to be the most important set of talks since the signing of the Paris climate agreement in 2015. So far, international commitments to reduce carbon emissions have fallen well short of what would be needed to prevent temperature increases of more than 1.5–2 °C above preindustrial levels, the stated goal of the Paris agreement. Countries had been expected to update and strengthen their commitments at the Glasgow meeting.

UN climate-change executive secretary Patricia Espinosa called COVID-19 the most urgent threat currently facing humanity, but stressed that climate change remains the biggest long-term danger. As the coronavirus threat recedes, she said, nations must look for ways to bolster their climate efforts. “This is a chance”, Espinosa said, “to shape the twenty-first-century economy in ways that are clean, green, healthy, just, safe and more resilient.”

The announcement followed a decision to delay a preparatory meeting, originally scheduled for June in Bonn, Germany, until October.

Coronavirus shuts down big physics experiments

Some of the world’s biggest physics facilities and astronomical observatories have had to suspend their operations in response to lockdowns caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Major experiments have been shut down at most of the US Department of Energy’s massive network of 17 national laboratories. And both the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) — with twin antennas in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington — and the Virgo interferometer near Pisa, Italy (pictured) shut down on 27 March to safeguard the health of their staff. The observatories had planned to end their data-collecting runs at the end of April, and to start significant upgrades in May, but these plans are now on hold.

Even facilities that are still able to run experiments remotely — including the SNOLAB underground facility near Sudbury, Canada, and the Gran Sasso National Laboratories in central Italy — are finding that planned upgrades or construction will have to wait. CERN, the world’s largest particle-physics experiment near Geneva, Switzerland, has had to suspend its upgrade work on the Large Hadron Collider.

Italy’s Virgo gravitational-wave detector has been forced to shut down.Credit: Claudio Giovannini/AFP/Getty

African nations missing from coronavirus trials

The World Health Organization says it wants many more African nations to participate in its SOLIDARITY trial, a global study of four potential COVID-19 treatments. The call comes as a new international consortium of researchers urges faster action on clinical research in countries with weak health systems — and offers to help coordinate the process so that researchers from Africa can more easily join.

Of the more than 300 clinical trials that have launched to find a treatment for COVID-19, most are in China and South Korea. And more are on the way in the European Union and the United States. But very few are taking place in Africa, Latin America and south and southeast Asia — where the virus could surge next. Experts cite several reasons why trials need to be conducted in low-income countries. For example, people in these countries can have different underlying conditions, and it is important to know whether they will respond to drugs differently compared with those in high-income nations.

“The situation is that we are running out of time,” warns Nathalie Strub-Wourgaft of the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi), a non-profit research organization based in Geneva. The DNDi is a member of the new COVID-19 Clinical Research Coalition that launched on 2 April.