Questionnaire design
To determine which are the main drivers of COVID-19 emergence in pets, a
questionnaire was used. A driver was defined as a factor that has the
potential to directly or indirectly precipitate (‘drive’) or lead to the
emergence of COVID-19 in carnivore domestic pets. A former questionnaire
made to rank re-emergence of animal diseases based on drivers (Bianchini
et al., 2020) was modified and adjusted for COVID-19 in pets. For this,
specific drivers of COVID-19 were identified by searching through the
available scientific literature and discussion with experts from
academia, government agencies and international bodies. These were then
added into the questionnaire, or some other drivers were deleted from it
as they were not considered pertinent. Finally, a total of forty-six
drivers were established and classified in eight different domains
(Table 1 ). The domains (D) were: (D1) pathogen/disease
characteristics (N 9 drivers); (D2) distance of outbreaks
(spatial-temporal scales) (N =3 drivers); (D3) ability to monitor, treat
and control the disease (N =7 drivers); (D4) characteristics of pets (N
= 7 drivers); (D5) changes in climate conditions (N = 3 drivers); (D6)
wildlife interface (N = 6 drivers); (D7) human activity (N = 6 drivers);
and (D8) economic and trade activities (N = 5 drivers).
These were formatted in an Excel® (Microsoft, Redmond, WA, USA, 2013)
file with one spreadsheet per domain, each domain with the respective
drivers. Each driver had a score with its definition, which could range
from 0 to 4 or 1 to 4 and a cell to be given the intra driver weight
point. A last spread sheet was added, in which the 8 domains were
listed, with a cell to be given the inter-domain weight
(Appendix S2) .