ABSTRACT
Millions of humans became infected during the pandemic. However, many animal species were known to have become infected too. Which animals were infected was hard to predict. The reporting of the pandemic was very anthropocentric, which meant that the coverage of the situation in animals was patchy at best. Here, different groups of animals are discussed: companion animals; those in captivity; those in the wild. One of the major outbreaks of SAR-CoV-2 infections was in mink. These are often held in cramped and confined places enabling rapid spread of the virus. It is also possible for the virus to rapidly mutate under such conditions and also, rather worryingly, to jump back to humans in that mutated form. It will never be fully known how animal populations were affected, and here there is a brief discussion of what was known, what we probably will never know, but how we may do better in this aspect in the future.
