03-12-2022, 09:18 AM
Here's what it means for humans
So how'd the deer catch the coronavirus?
We don't know for sure. Marques admits, "Everything is basically speculation at the moment." So let's speculate.
It's possible there was some form of direct deer-human interaction, perhaps through people feeding the animals. Or maybe the deer drank human wastewater or untreated sewage and picked up circulating coronavirus, though Marques finds that possibility unlikely because the virus isn't typically stable for long periods of time outside the body and because typical wastewater treatment would destroy viral particles. Or perhaps the coronavirus passed through one of the known intermediate animal host species, such as a mink, feral cat or deer mouse.
Are there any possible long-term consequences of the coronavirus in deer?
If history is any guide, the answer is yes. "I can't think of a single zoonotic disease that has established in an animal reservoir in the wild that we have been successful at eradicating," says Barbara Han, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. She wasn't involved with either of the two studies but says the work is critical for assessing human risk. And she isn't surprised by the results.
In fact, in a separate study, to assess spillover probabilities among 5,400 mammals, Han and her team used machine learning to train an algorithm to recognize the characteristics of species whose ACE2 receptors tightly bind the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The algorithm identified over 500 of these species to be possible suspects, including an array of primates, bats, carnivores (such as red foxes and spotted hyenas) and ungulates (such as deer and gazelles).
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsod...-for-human
So how'd the deer catch the coronavirus?
We don't know for sure. Marques admits, "Everything is basically speculation at the moment." So let's speculate.
It's possible there was some form of direct deer-human interaction, perhaps through people feeding the animals. Or maybe the deer drank human wastewater or untreated sewage and picked up circulating coronavirus, though Marques finds that possibility unlikely because the virus isn't typically stable for long periods of time outside the body and because typical wastewater treatment would destroy viral particles. Or perhaps the coronavirus passed through one of the known intermediate animal host species, such as a mink, feral cat or deer mouse.
Are there any possible long-term consequences of the coronavirus in deer?
If history is any guide, the answer is yes. "I can't think of a single zoonotic disease that has established in an animal reservoir in the wild that we have been successful at eradicating," says Barbara Han, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. She wasn't involved with either of the two studies but says the work is critical for assessing human risk. And she isn't surprised by the results.
In fact, in a separate study, to assess spillover probabilities among 5,400 mammals, Han and her team used machine learning to train an algorithm to recognize the characteristics of species whose ACE2 receptors tightly bind the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The algorithm identified over 500 of these species to be possible suspects, including an array of primates, bats, carnivores (such as red foxes and spotted hyenas) and ungulates (such as deer and gazelles).
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsod...-for-human
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