Covid-19 in White-tailed Deer

[trailertraveler]

Here is a link to an article about Covid-19 that I found interesting.  

Quote

From April to December of last year, about 30% of the deer that they tested were positive for SARS-CoV-2 by a PCR test. And then during the winter surge in Iowa, from Nov. 23, 2020, to Jan. 10 of this year, about 80% of the deer that they tested were infected. At the peak of the surge, Kapur says, the prevalence of the virus in deer was effectively about 50 to 100 times the prevalence in Iowa residents at the time. 

During this time frame, the team also sequenced the genes of nearly 100 samples of the virus. They found the variants circulating in the deer matched the variants circulating in people....

Another concern, Saif says, is that SARS-CoV-2 could evolve inside the deer and create new strains of the virus. Researchers have already documented such a scenario with minks on farms in the Netherlands and Poland, she points out. In those studies, farmworkers passed the virus on to captive animals. As the virus spread through the minks, it mutated and created new variants. These new versions of the virus then spilled back to the humans, the researchers reported.

 

Edited December 24, 2021 by trailertraveler