from Hacker News

SARS-CoV-2 exposure in wild white-tailed deer

by dthal on 8/1/21, 9:47 PM with 8 comments

  • by criticaltinker on 8/2/21, 12:41 AM

    I find these observations both fascinating & concerning - it represents another subtle but important dimension to consider in our ongoing efforts to mitigate the pandemic.

    Although not specifically mentioned in the paper, IMO farms and home gardens are a likely place for such pathogens to be exchanged.

    Highlights from the paper (which is not peer-reviewed yet):

    - "We evaluated 624 pre- and post-pandemic serum samples from wild deer from four U.S. states for SARS-CoV-2 exposure."

    - "Antibodies were detected in 152 samples (40%) from 2021 using a surrogate virus neutralization test."

    - "Seroprevalence for individual counties was highly clustered with nearly half of the 32 counties sampled showing no evidence of SARS-CoV-2 exposure"

    - "Several potential transmission routes are possible for movement of this virus into wild deer populations. [..] including captive cervid operations, field research, conservation work, wildlife tourism, wildlife rehabilitation, supplemental feeding, and hunting."

    - "Wildlife contact with contaminated water sources has also been offered as a potential transmission route, although transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 from wastewater has yet to be conclusively demonstrated. Transmission from fomites or other infected animal species cannot be discounted."

    - "Besides health impacts to wildlife, persistent infections in a novel host could lead to adaptation, strain evolution, and re-emergence of strains with altered transmissibility, pathogenicity, and vaccine escape."

  • by throwawaysea on 8/2/21, 12:48 PM

    There have been past examples of animals in zoos, most recently tigers in Indonesia, also catching COVID-19 (https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/rare-sumatran-tigers...). However it is scarier to see wild animals carry COVID, especially at such high rates. Have there been examples of past viruses that transmitted from humans to animals, mutated, and then spread back to humans? What I wonder is if a much larger number of hosts exchanging the virus means a higher probability of a dangerous mutation whose evolutionary fitness is adequate to compete against even the Delta (India) variant.

  • by platz on 8/2/21, 12:25 AM

    A new animal reservoir for covid