COVID-19 in animals: SARS-CoV-2 evolving rapidly in free-ranging white-tailed deer

Lockdowns and strict lockdowns because of coronavirus (COVID-19) have been waning but the fear of coronavirus, which is behind the deadly COVID-19 pandemic is far from gone. 

The Covid virus and its various mutations have impacted humans immensely, and a new study has highlighted that the virus also commonly leaps from us to white-tailed deer, and it is probably evolving even more rapidly. 

The study titled - Accelerated evolution of SARS-CoV-2 in free-ranging white-tailed deer - was published in Nature Communications. In some regions of the United States, the virus may currently be widespread among white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus). 

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The study mentioned that the researchers have detected that SARS-CoV-2 was introduced from humans into white-tailed deer more than 30 times in Ohio, USA from November 2021 to March 2022. 

Deer-to-deer transmission thereafter continued for 2–8 months and spread across a vast area, the study said, further adding that the development of SARS-CoV-2 is three times faster in white-tailed deer than it is in humans. 

The newly established Bayesian phylogenetic approaches revealed that it is also influenced by different mutational biases and selection pressures. 

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Given that our animal models using viruses with origins in white-tailed deer did not show any significant phenotypic alterations, the long-term impact of this increased evolutionary pace is yet unknown. 

Although SARS-CoV-2 has just recently begun to spread among white-tailed deer populations, any future modifications could have a significant negative impact on both humans and cattle. 

As quoted by Science Alert, study co-author Andrew Bowman, who is a veterinary epidemiologist at Ohio State University, "We generally talk about interspecies transmission as a rare event, but this wasn't a huge sampling, and we're able to document 30 spillovers. It seems to be moving between people and animals quite easily." 

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Bowman said: "And the evidence is growing that humans can get it from deer – which isn't radically surprising. It's probably not a one-way pipeline." 

"We expanded across Ohio to see if this was a localized problem – and we find it in lots of places, so it's not just a localized event," Bowman says.

"Some of the thought back then was that maybe it's just in urban deer because they're in closer contact with people," he adds. "But in rural parts of the state, we're finding plenty of positive deer."

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