The nucleic acid of SARS-CoV-2 was negetive in 775 fur animal samples

ABSTRACT

In December 2019, an outbreak of a respiratory illness took place in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, and spread throughout China and other countries. A beta genus coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2 was isolated and identified as a cause of the outbreak. Currently, the main infectious sources(host)of SARS-CoV-2 have not been identified. It has been reported that SARS-CoV-2 was possibly originated from wild animals, for example, bats. However, there are no reports on the traceability of SARS-CoV-2 to fur animals, such as minks, foxes and raccoon dogs, which are widely farmed in Northern China. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 in fur animals. In this study, we detected SARS-CoV-2 in 625 tissue specimens collected from farmed minks, foxes and raccoon dogs of unknown death cases in 14 regions of China from 2016 to 2019 and 150 fecal samples collected from farmed minks, foxes and raccoon dogs in Jilin Province, China from August to December in 2019 using the Real-time RT-PCR method recommended by WHO. The results showed that SARS-CoV-2 was not detected in all the 775 samples.