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In December 2020, COVID-19 was able to reach the farthest continent, Antarctica. The story began after a visit from a ship carrying supplies to the Chilean Bernardo O’Higgins research station with three subclinical COVID-19 carriers. After three days, 36 Chileans were tested positive for the disease; they were isolated and monitored by health authorities in Magallanes regions trying to manage and decrease the risk of the spread.
Scientists concerned with wildlife studies became very worried about the wildlife in Antarctica from different points of view. This is because most research stations in Antarctica are found near wildlife populations to facilitate studying, handling, and examining animals well. Although COVID-19 is a zoonotic disease that came from an animal source, just as many other Coronavirus species, the presence of infected people around animals may cause reverse zoonosis, allowing the virus to jump from humans to new animals that are not tested for COVID-19 yet.
If we take a look back on the studies scientists conducted on different animals in previously infected countries, we will observe that animals’ susceptibly to the virus varies according to their species. These studies ensured that mink felines, dogs, and ferrets were infected by COVID-19, but they reacted differently towards it. For example, adolescent cats tested positive, got sick, and recovered after a while. On the other hand, dogs were more resistant to the virus. Antarctica does not have these species of animals, but it has a wide range of others. It contains half the seals found in the world, millions of seabirds, 45% of the world’s penguins, and 17% of the world’s whales and dolphins.
As a result, scientists tried to create computer simulations and records to reach a prediction for those animals’ susceptibility to the virus. Those predictions were made according to the makeup of the animals genetic receptors to the virus. They found out that whales and dolphins are highly susceptible to infection compared to seals and birds living there. On the other hand, its effect on the ecosystem stability is still unknown, as the animals are not tested for the virus yet, and its real effect is unknown too.
In order to learn more about the wildlife in Antarctica, scientists have to get very close to those animals to examine them well, and discover their lives, habits, and susceptibility to different diseases. Unfortunately, this made them one of the main sources for spreading COVID-19 among those animals, even more than the tourists who may not get that close to them.
Tourists are the second reason for the spread of COVID-19 in Antarctica, as about 80,000 tourists visited it between October 2019 and April 2020 when COVID-19 had begun to spread. Tourists could be the source of transmission of several types of microbes through their clothes and luggage, if they were not disinfected.
Our main goal now is preventing COVID-19’s transmission to Antarctica’s wildlife, so our first guideline is to decrease human-to-human transmission by taking some simple precautions, such as wearing face masks, maintaining at least two meters distance between each other, avoiding close contact with sick people, and socializing outdoors while avoiding large gatherings. We all have seen how one visitor can be carrying thousands of different types of microbes and how one tiny unseen micro-organism can turn the world upside down. As a result, we need to make sure that the virus will not jump to new animals to decrease the opportunity of its development to a new and more virulent species.
The second guideline is preventing human-to-animal transmission, especially from people who get very close to animals as they are considered the main source of infection. First, scientists should be the only ones to handle and get very close to animals in order to examine them. They should be wearing protective clothes and use well disinfected equipment and instruments. Second, visitors and tourists from all over the world should be tested for COVID-19 then kept in quarantine for 14 days. They should be wearing clean and disinfected clothes when they visit the animals. A distance of at least five meters should be kept from the animals to minimize the possibility of infection spread.
The virus nature depends on its propagation and development; if it has the opportunity to spread and propagate within humans, it would be unstoppable. What we need to do now is to keep attacking the virus, prevent its transmission among us; like us, animals are amazing creatures that have a vital role in the ecosystem so we must keep them safe as well.
References
dw.com
nationalgeographic.com
theconversation.com
This article was first published in print in SCIplanet, Winter/Spring 2021 issue.
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