LAHORE: A post-mortem report into the death of two white tiger cubs at the Lahore Zoo has cast suspicion that they might have contracted coronavirus which led to their apparent death from sickness, ARY NEWS reported on Wednesday.
The post-mortem report suspected that they might have contracted coronavirus as signs of swelling were found on their intestines while one of their lungs also got squeezed due to an infection.
It further shed light that the second lung of both white tiger cubs was filled with water.
“Signs of blood clots were also found on the hearts of the cubs, showing symptoms of hemorrhage,” the post-mortem report said adding that the cubs also had difficulty in breathing before their death.
The administration of the Lahore Zoo said that six of their employees have already tested positive for COVID-19 so far, who may have become a source of transmitting a virus to the cubs.
It is pertinent to mention here that in April 2020, a tiger at New York’s Bronx Zoo tested positive for COVID-19, the institution said and is believed to have contracted the virus from a caretaker who was asymptomatic at the time.
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The four-year-old Malayan tiger named Nadia along with her sister Azul, two Amur tigers and three African lions all developed dry coughs and were expected to fully recover, the Wildlife Conservation Society that runs the city’s zoos said in a statement.
The zoo emphasized that there is “no evidence that animals play a role in the transmission of COVID-19 to people other than the initial event in the Wuhan market, and no evidence that any person has been infected with COVID-19 in the US by animals, including by pet dogs or cats.”
