North America’s domestic cats appear to be maintaining good respiratory health amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is according to pet insurance company, Trupanion, which has amassed the claims history from more than 1.5 million pets, spanning 20 years, to extrapolate real-time trends in pet health across North America.

The company reports feline respiratory insurance claims have remained ‘static’ over the past three months, suggesting domestic cats have not been contracting the virus throughout the pandemic.

“We continue to monitor claims at a granular level, extrapolating insights that can be used, as needed, to inform pet owners, veterinarians, and the animal health community at large,” says the company’s vice-president of analytics, Mary Rothlisberger. “While we do see normal seasonal fluctuations, our data suggests frequency of respiratory-related claims remains consistent, both countrywide and in high impact areas such as Washington, California, and New York.”

The announcement follows last week’s news out of New York’s Bronx Zoo that a female Malayan tiger had tested positive for COVID-19. The cat, which is believed to have contracted the illness from a zoo employee who was actively shedding the virus, has since seen an improvement in her condition.

The Canadian Veterinary Medical Association (CVMA) and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) state that, ‘as a precautionary measure,’ those infected with COVID-19 should restrict contact with animals and livestock, just as they would humans, until more is known about the virus.

“COVID-19 virus infections have become widely distributed in the human population,” CVMA said in a statement. “In some rare circumstances, some animals have become infected through close contact with infected humans.

“Currently, there is no evidence to suggest that animals infected by humans are playing a role in the spread of COVID-19. Human outbreaks are driven by person to person contact.”