South Korea is now offering COVID-19 tests for pet dogs and cats suspected to have been taken ill with the disease.
Officials at the Seoul metropolitan government said Tuesday that pet dogs and cats in the city will be tested for COVID-19 if these animals show symptoms of the disease like fever or breathing difficulties.
The announcement comes a few weeks after South Korea reported its first COVID-19 case in an animal, a kitten in the southeastern city of Jinju. In February 2020 at the very start of the pandemic, Hong Kong became the first country to report an animal infected with COVID-19, in this case a dog belonging to a coronavirus patient.
Seoul officials emphasized only pets with COVID-19 symptoms after being exposed to humans positive for the coronavirus will be tested.
The pet will be quarantined at the home of its owner if it tests positive for SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2), the virus that causes COVID-19, said Park Yoo-mi, a disease control official at the Seoul government.
She also said it isn't necessary for the infected pet to be sent to an isolation facility since there's still no evidence COVID-19 can be spread between humans and pets.
If the pet's owner has been hospitalized with COVID-19 or is too ill or too old to take care of the animal, the pet will be taken into quarantine at a city-run facility.
Park reminded South Koreans to keep their pets "at least two meters away from people and other pets when walking them."
Domestic pets have become more important in South Korea due to the isolation imposed by COVID-19 and the need for companionship in households with only a single person.
One in four South Korean adults now keeps a pet, and the average pet owner spends some $90 every month on their animals.
Several experts said the need for companionship, which is readily provided by pets, in an increasingly impersonal and atomized society such as South Korea's is driving the rise in pet ownership.
"Increasing single-household numbers and a relatively high level of stress experienced from interacting with people in South Korea might have contributed to this change," said Suh Eun-kook, a professor of psychology at Seoul's Yonsei University.
