Is it possible that cat owners have higher immunity for COVID-19?

In a paper deposited in BioRxiv entitled: "Susceptibility of ferrets, cats, dogs, and different domestic animals to SARS-coronavirus-2" the team from Harbin Vet Institute intentionally infected several species of animals including cats with SARS-CoV-2. The results showed that the virus was transmitted between the cats, but no sympthoms of COVID-19 were observed.

This result is interesting in terms of an observation made by a medic from Spain - Sabina Olex-Condor that from the 100 patients serious with COVID-19 that she examined there were no cat owners. She suggested as a hypothesis that due to cross-immunity (cats are a known reservoir of coronaviruses) cat owners have milder sympthoms of COVID-19.

I'm aware that the paper from Harbin Institute is a pilot study, has many possible dead ends and limitations. I'm also aware that this cross-immunity hypothesis suggested by Sabina need serious assement due to limited number (and problalbly non-representative set) of patients.

Do you think that this is possible in terms of knowledge of human immunology? If the above is met do any of you have access to indepth demografic (?) data of people infected with SARS-CoV-2 to check this hypothesis?

Disclaimer: not an expert in medicine or veterinary, I study plant genomics, this is pure scientific curiosity.

I hope that your families and friends are well.

Los Alamos National Laboratory

There are thousands of coronaviruses infecting mammals. Humans commonly are infected with four which cause common colds (229E, OC43, HKU1 and NL63) and we have also been infected by SARS-CoV (2003-2004 outbreak) and MERS-CoV (2013 and other small outbreaks), as well as this new (SARS-CoV-2 pandemic) strain. Cats and dogs, and bats and pigs and cattle and horses all have coronaviruses of various types infecting them too.

There is no evidence that other cat coronaviruses such as the Feline coronavirus UU21, or Feline infectious peritonitis virus, can infect humans or cause any cross-protection against SARS-CoV-2. These viruses are all very distantly related to each other, and so are the 4 human common cold coronavirses, so we would not expect any cross-protection at all. If that type of broadly cross-protective immunity was possible, then one human influenza vaccine would be good for all, and making a vaccine for HIV would be easy.

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