In recent months, scientists have found deer-to-deer spread of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 across the United States, from Ohio to Iowa to Canada. The new work in which more than 80% of white-tailed deer sampled in different parts of Iowa have the virus or more than 67% in Michigan are positive and show signs of the disease, leads to the idea that “in reality we could have established a new maintenance host outside of humans,” according to Andrew Bowman of The Ohio State University and lead author of a new paper published in the journal Nature.
Deer can be reservoirs of SARS-CoV-2
Although scientists have not confirmed the exact cause of how these wild animals have contracted COVID, the leading hypothesis is that the deer are drinking contaminated water; research shows that the virus persists in human feces and sewage.
There are hundreds of animals that have tested positive for coronavirus in Illinois, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Ohio… and researchers fear that the entire deer population will end up infected.
The findings, according to the experts, highlight the “critical need to urgently implement surveillance programs to monitor the spread of SARS-CoV-2 within deer and other susceptible wild wildlife species, and implement methods to mitigate the spread of SARS-CoV-2.” possible spill.
SARS-CoV-2 could mutate when passing between deer, which could facilitate the transmission of new strains to humans and other species, although there is still no evidence to support this hypothesis.
“It is concerning that SARS-CoV-2 may also survive in deer without mutations while simultaneously continuing to evolve in humans, and at some point, when humans have no immunity to the strains that infect deer, those variants could return to humans. humans,” says Bowman. “Here, we are saying that in the wild, they are infected, and if they can maintain it, we have a new potential source of SARS-CoV-2 that would reach humans.”
Referencia: Hale, V.L., Dennis, P.M., McBride, D.S. et al. SARS-CoV-2 infection in free-ranging white-tailed deer. Nature (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04353-x
