While the overwhelming focus of the COVID-19 pandemic has been
on the effect that the virus has had on humankind, there have been
documented cases of the SARS-CoV-2 virus infecting animals.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health
Inspection Service (APHIS) tracks the incidence of the the virus in
animals in the U.S. That analysis continues to show
that infection in animals is quite small.
The APHIS website most recently updated its data collection on
this subject on April 11:
Source:
APHIS website.
As can be seen, there have only been 362 confirmed cases of
SARS-CoV-2 virus in the U.S. among companion and other animals and
18 cases on mink farms. Moreover, there have been some
confirmed cases among free-ranging (wild) animals, including
mink, mule deer and white-tailed deer. This, of course,
stands in sharp contrast to the spread of the virus among humans in
the U.S. According to Johns
Hopkins University Medicine, to date
