Estimating the overall weighted score and ranking of drivers of COVID-19 emergence in pets
According to the non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis test, the medians of the weight between domains of drivers are not equal (Chi-squared test = 114 with 7 d.f. and α = 0.05; P -value = 0.0001) (Figure 2 ).
Moreover, according to the non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis test, the medians of the overall weighted scores for the different drivers are not equal (Chi-squared test = 772 with 45 d.f. and α = 0.05; P -value = 0.0001). Five of them were ranked as having the highest probability to play a key role in the emergence of COVID-19 in pets. These were in decreasing order: “availability and quality of diagnostic tools”, “human density close to pets”, “ability of preventive/control measures to stop the disease from entering the country or spreading (except for treatment, vaccination and reservoir(s) control)”, “current species specificity of the disease causing agent” and “current knowledge on the pathogen” (Figure 3 ).