COVID Lurking in Animals

The strain of COVID-nineteen circulating now is not the one that we began the pandemic with. Each time the virus infects someone, it can mutate. But humans are not its only reservoirs. Scientists are now searching for the virus in other animals. For example, in two thousand twenty, the virus was spreading in Ohio’s white-tailed deer. More than ten percent sampled had it and the virus was related to the strain circulating in people at the time. Since deer are solitary, we don’t know how the virus passed from human to deer.  

What’s concerning is that sequencing of the genomes of the deer viruses showed it was mutating quickly. This can happen after an interspecies jump as it adapts to a new host. This also means new variants of the COVID-nineteen virus are emerging and can make a jump back into humans, starting a new epidemic.  

The same study has documented that COVID-nineteen has spread to more than fifty animal species, including wild mice, minks, swan, leopard, raccoon, lions, tigers, ground hogs, squirrels, armadillos, and even rhinos and hippos.  Some of these animals may be dead-end hosts with the virus never being transmitted between animals.  Others could amplify and mutate the virus. Scientists haven’t studied whether some of these animals can transmit viruses to us humans.  

This study is the type of public health surveillance and monitoring essential to prepare us and alert us to future threats.