Confirmed the first positives for covid-19 in apes of the Cantabrian nature park
The life of the gorilla family Cabárceno nature park suffered a setback in May when the dominant male, ‘Nicky’, got infected with covid-19and the response of these great primates has been the same as that of humans, with one difference: they are not vaccinated.
It was on May 26 when the keepers of these animals began to worry after seeing Nicky fallen on the ground, barely responding to stimuli, not eating, with runny nose and tearing, symptoms that soon began to replicate in other gorillas in the groupin his case with respiratory symptoms.
“And then, white and bottled. It’s a symptomatology similar to what we have human primates“, considers in an interview with Efeverde the chief veterinarian of the Cabárceno Nature Park, Santiago Borragan.
And he adds that after collecting the stool samples and analyzing them at the Valdecilla Hospital, the first positives for covid-19 were confirmed in the Cabárceno gorillas, which has affected six of the seven specimens what the park has Borragán insists that the park’s gorilla family has behaved in the face of the disease like a family of humans.
“Dad began to have problems and then others have had problems. Others they will have passed it without any type of symptomatology. A behavior that has been exactly the same as in a human home”, considers this veterinarian about the response they have seen in these great primates.
However, the concern for the animals was “elderly“because, although the variant detected in gorillas has been the omicron, which is the one that is circulating and from which most people are infected, these animals are not vaccinated. Santiago Borragán states that the lack of vaccination was “a serious problem” and could endanger these primates.
For this reason, the Cabárceno team of veterinarians keep tracking and analyzing gorillass to see if the virus is still in their body and to know if they are discharged definitively. Now, in the enclosure that houses these animals, there are no coronavirus problems but, even so, all precaution is little and all park staff who come near gorillas must take measures such as wearing a mask to prevent further transmission of the virus to primates.
“The logical thing is that we humans have transmitted it. Someone, at some point, has been able to inadvertently introduce the virus into them,” acknowledges the park’s chief veterinarian, who highlights the importance of humans being vaccinated and having been able to generate antibodies against the disease, which gorillas do not have .
The caretaker of these animals, Lucia Gandarillas, remembers how the five females of this family began to surround Nicky when he began to get “a little pachucho”, and assures that they were “worried about him, they did not separate and caress him”. “The same as us when we have a relative who is sick,” says Gandarillas, who remembers that when some females began to get sick, the youngsters were “curious” because their parents were more downcast, they had runny nose and cough. “Just like a normal family of humans,” insists this caretaker.
Lucía explains that the gorillas have done, after the covid, normal life until these days with the heat wave, which has them less active because they don’t feel like going out into the large open space they have next to their enclosure. Apart from the heat, they play, eat, rest and sleep “normally” as before the coronavirus. The caretaker assures that this behavior allows those responsible for the park be calmwhile Nicky, the silverback of this pack, continues to care for his five females and their calfanother 3-year-old male.