The coronavirus pandemic isn’t over yet, no matter how exhausting it is. And woodland creatures around our homes now are proving it.
According to a report from NPR, scientists say white-tailed deer are increasingly carrying SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. The deer are picking up the virus and carrying it with them across the country, spreading it to other deer possibly “indefinitely.”
But that’s not all — scientists say that the deer could pass the virus back to humans and create newer, more resistant strains. This is not good news for Ohio, where white-tailed deer are plentiful and serve as the state mammal.
NPR reports:
In September of last year, computer models suggested SARS-CoV-2 could easily bind to and enter the deer’s cells. A recent survey of white-tailed deer in the Northeast and Midwest found that 40% of them had antibodies against SARS-CoV-2.
Now veterinarians at Pennsylvania State University have found active SARS-CoV-2 infections in at least 30% of deer tested across Iowa during 2020. Their study, published online last week, suggests that white-tailed deer could become what’s known as a reservoir for SARS-CoV-2. That is, the animals could carry the virus indefinitely and spread it back to humans periodically.
This means that COVID-19 could be here to stay for longer than we’d like, due both to humans’ refusal to mask up and get vaccinated and from deer being deer.
“If the virus has opportunities to find an alternate host besides humans, which we would call a reservoir, that will create a safe haven where the virus can continue to circulate even if the entire human population becomes immune,” Suresh Kuchipudi, a veterinary virologist at Penn State and co-leader of the deer study, tells NPR. “And so it becomes more and more complicated to manage or even eradicate the virus.”
More nightmare fuel (emphasis ours):
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, (Vivek) Kapur (Penn State veterinary microbiologist and co-leader of the study), 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.
Those genomic sequences suggest that during the pandemic, deer have caught the virus from people multiple times in Iowa alone, Kapur says. “The data are very consistent again with frequent spillover events from humans into deer and then transmission among the animals.”
Sure, that’s Iowa, which is kind of far away. But what about Ohio? Do we have zombie deer here?
Uhhhhh, yep.
“We also have detected the virus in deer in Ohio,” says Linda Saif, a virologist at Ohio State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. “And there are antibody studies that suggest the prevalence of COVID infections among deer are pretty high in the Midwest and East.”
According to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, the Buckeye State has about 700,000 white-tailed deer.
This is not the first we’ve heard of scientists worrying about the coronavirus in animals. The Cincinnati Zoo has been giving a special COVID-19 vaccine to animals that it says are most susceptible to the virus, including big cats, gorillas and other mammals who have close interactions with humans.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, there have been more than 750,000 COVID-19 deaths in the United States, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The United States leads all global countries in coronavirus deaths by a wide margin.
In Ohio alone, there have been more than 25,000 COVID-19 deaths, the Buckeye State’s coronavirus portal shows.
The CDC labels all counties within Ohio as “high risk” for COVID-19 transmission — a designation that has been in place for months since the Delta variant’s summer and early-fall surge. Only about 56% of Ohio’s population has started a COVID-19 vaccine series, and only 52% are fully vaccinated (two doses for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, one dose for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine). More than 1,075,000 additional doses have been doled out within the state.
Experts say that communities should vaccinate more than 80% of their population before the United States can approach herd immunity or a safer endemic.
Public health officials — including those in Hamilton County — continue to urge people to wear face masks and physically distance within large groups, especially as COVID-19 vaccinations wane as the winter holidays approach.
For more vaccine administration locations and information, visit coronavirus.ohio.gov in Ohio or kycovid19.ky.gov in Kentucky.
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This article appears in Nov 10-23, 2021.