Tiger with fever dies at Ranchi zoo, samples sent for Covid test

RANCHI: A tiger, suffering from fever and other Covid-like symptoms, died at Ranchi's Bhagwan Birsa Munda Biological Park on Thursday night. Doctors at the zoo have sent nasopharyngeal swabs and blood samples of Shiva (a 10-year-old male) for RT-PCR tests to Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh, to confirm if he was infected with coronavirus.
Shiva, one of the 10 tigers at the zoo, had developed fever on May 31.“Though the fever subsided, he had lost appetite over the course of the next two days. He did not eat at all on Thursday and died later in the night," Dr OP Sahu, the zoo vet, told TOI.
The zoo management procured rapid antigen kits from a medical store in Ranchi and screened the dead big cat. "The RAT returned a negative result, but we decided to send his samples to Indian Veterinary Research Institute laboratory in Bareilly for confirmatory tests and histopathological examinations," Sahu said.
The park management has sent the tiger's corpse to the Ranchi Veterinary College for an autopsy, where preliminary reports suggested that Shiva died of liver and kidney failure. The Central Zoo Authority guidelines mandate all zoos in the country conduct autopsies of all their dead animals.
The zoo authorities claimed all the remaining tigers -- six female and three male -- have been put under observation and their enclosures are being sanitized. Though the zoo is closed for visitors, sources said four zookeepers have tested positive for Covid recently and are in home isolation. "However, none of them were working at the tiger enclosures when they were tested,” an official said.
Brought from Karnataka's Banerghatta Biological Park in November 2014, Shiva was reluctant to mate with the two tigresses Laxmi and Durga despite best efforts of the zookeepers and the doctors.