Monkeys can die out due to coronavirus

While there are no reliably known cases of a new type of coronavirus infection in higher primates,

except for people, however, all public monkey shelters in the world have already been closed, and people are strictly forbidden to visit them.

According to Kirsten Gilardi, chief veterinarian at Gorilla Doctors, great apes are susceptible to human diseases and are much more difficult to treat than humans.

Now scientists and veterinarians have begun to studyThe state of some rare types of monkeys, such as the mountain gorilla, which live only in the forests of Rwanda, Uganda and Congo. Even before the outbreak of coronavirus infection, people needed to stay away from monkeys at a distance of seven meters. According to the new rules, caretakers and veterinarians only in emergency cases can approach the monkeys, the rest must keep a distance of at least 10 m.

Scientists note that infectious diseasesare the third most dangerous problem for monkeys, after loss of habitat and poaching. For example, the Ebola virus in Africa killed at least several thousand chimpanzees and gorillas.

Now in 184 countries there are more than 1.6million cases of infection with this infection. Eight countries account for 80% of all cases — the United States, Spain, Italy, Germany, France, China, Iran, and the United Kingdom. At the same time, in China, where the virus came from, there is a significant reduction in the epidemic. Since the end of 2019, 95 thousand people have died from coronavirus infection, more than 356 thousand people have been cured. In Russia, there are a total of 10,917 patients with coronavirus infection, 94 patients died, 795 were cured.

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