NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — The head of the Cyprus veterinarians association on Wednesday dismissed as greatly exaggerated the claims that a local mutation of a feline virus has killed as many as 300,000 cats on the small Mediterranean island.
The director of the Pancyprian Veterinary Association, Nektaria Ioannou Arsenoglou, said the group’s survey of 35 veterinary clinics indicate an island-wide total of only about 8,000 deaths. Arsenoglou said numbers that have been presented by local animal activists and amplified by foreign media outlets “simply don’t add up.”
Arsenoglou told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the local mutation of a feline coronavirus that causes Feline Infectious Peritonitis (FIP) is nearly always lethal if left untreated, but that medication can nurse cats back to health in approximately 85% of cases.
Spread through contact with cat feces, neither the virus or its mutation can be passed on to humans.
Specific medication that can treat both the so-called “wet” and “dry” forms of the illness is very expensive, although Arsenoglou said she was “optimistic” that the government would soon be able secure more medicine.