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Over half the deer in Michigan seem to have been exposed to SARS-CoV-2 - Ars Technica
Jul 29, 2021 1 min, 31 secs

On Wednesday, the US Department of Agriculture released some rather disturbing news: a survey of wild deer populations has found that large numbers of the animals seem to have been exposed to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

The finding indicates that there's a very large population of wild animals in North America that could serve as a reservoir for the virus, even if we were to get its circulation within the human population under control.

The USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is studying a variety of species "to identify species that may serve as reservoirs or hosts for the virus, as well as understand the origin of the virus, and predict its impacts on wildlife and the risks of cross-species transmission." This is the same group that identified the spread of the virus to a wild mink in 2020.

Using a captive deer population, the USDA had already determined that deer can be infected by the virus, although the animals display no symptoms.

Understanding how the transmission takes place will be critical to determining whether the existence of a large viral reservoir in deer poses a threat to humans.

While there's been no indication of a human picking up an infection from deer, the virus is so common in the US population that it would be difficult to rule out human-to-human transmission as an alternative explanation for any cases.

Another issue is that the virus can pick up mutations that help it adapt to deer as a host and prove dangerous to humans if the virus jumps back to humans.

In any case, both of these issues—the presence of a difficult-to-control reservoir and the prospect for further evolution of the virus—means that it will be important to understand how the virus is reaching the deer population and whether it's spreading between deer.

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