{"id":4480,"date":"2023-08-29T19:55:26","date_gmt":"2023-08-30T00:55:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=4480"},"modified":"2023-08-29T19:55:55","modified_gmt":"2023-08-30T00:55:55","slug":"latest-covid-twist-coronavirus-is-spreading-in-deer-study-finds-and-many-are-getting-it-from-humans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2023\/08\/29\/latest-covid-twist-coronavirus-is-spreading-in-deer-study-finds-and-many-are-getting-it-from-humans\/","title":{"rendered":"Latest Covid Twist: Coronavirus Is Spreading In Deer, Study Finds\u2014And Many Are Getting It From Humans"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Forbes<\/a> Researchers have discovered dozens of white-tailed deer infected with the virus that causes Covid-19 in Ohio, suggesting that spillover of the virus between humans and animals is less rare than previously believed, according to a study published Monday in the journal\u00a0Nature Communications<\/a><\/em>\u2014news that comes as doctors are tracking a new Covid-19 variant in humans. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scientists collected 1,522 nasal swabs from free-ranging deer in 83 of Ohio\u2019s 88 counties between November 2021 and March 2022, tested those swabs and found more than 10% of the samples were infected with coronavirus, according to the study.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Additionally, the researchers found, by analyzing the genetic material of the virus, that at least 30 of those infections had been introduced to the deer by humans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They also found, by examining blood samples to detect antibodies that would indicate previous exposure to coronavirus, that an estimated 23.5% of deer in Ohio had been infected with the virus at one point in time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Researchers said they\u2019d initially thought the infections would be mostly limited to deer living in urban parts of the state that have lots of contact with people, but at least one positive case was found in a deer in 59% of the counties in which testing took place, many of which were rural.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andrew Bowman, co-senior author of the study and an associate professor of veterinary preventive medicine at Ohio State University, said that this is \u201cprobably not a one-way pipeline\u201d and that \u201cthe evidence is growing that humans can get it from deer\u201d too, though the study did suggest that the Covid-19 vaccines helps protect against spillover of the virus from deer to humans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The researchers said their findings suggest the white-tailed deer serves as a \u201creservoir\u201d for coronavirus and that the virus can both mutate quicker in deer, but also that strains of the virus\u2014like the original alpha strain that began the Covid-19 pandemic or the delta strain which was largely replaced by the omicron strain in late 2021\u2014are surviving in deer populations, despite no longer being seen in humans.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Forbes Researchers have discovered dozens of white-tailed deer infected with the virus that causes Covid-19 in Ohio, suggesting that spillover of the virus between humans and animals is less rare than previously believed, according to a study published Monday in the journal\u00a0Nature Communications\u2014news that comes as doctors are tracking a new Covid-19 variant in humans. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":4481,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-avian-influenza"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/Screenshot-2023-08-29-at-20.54.41.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4480"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4484,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4480\/revisions\/4484"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}