A lot of people don’t know that the head veterinary pathologist at the Bronx Zoo is a the one health hero who discovered West Nile Virus was in New York City. The zoo is now part of a network of zoos that uses monitoring of animals to get more information about spread of zoonoses https://twitter.com/natashaldaly/status/1246900371706036228

Her TED talk about the important of one health and how hard it was to get anyone to listen to her about West Nile Virus is amazing:

Also: stay away from pets, wildlife, zoo animals if you are sick. Consider keeping your animals from approaching strangers right now. You probably can’t get COVID19 from them but there is a small chance they can get it from you.

The cats were tested at the zoo’s lab and then confirmed at a USDA lab. There’s some upset that this might have taken a human test but 1) probably not and 2) we don’t want this ongoing monitoring to stop, stopping a sister program, PREDICT, may be part of what got us here.