Study suggests deer may be able to infect humans with COVID-19

A study conducted by several scientists titled “Multiple spillovers and onward transmission of SARS-Cov-2 in free-living and captive White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus),” discovered the possibility of White-Tailed deer being able to transmit COVID-19 to humans. 

The study included retropharyngeal lymph node samples from 283 both wild and captive deer in Iowa, one third of the samples tested positive for COVID-19.

The study claims the possibility of spillback to humans and spillover to other wildlife species. 

Human to animal transmissions were reported during the height of  the COVID-19 pandemic in some domestic species and zoo animals. 

White-tailed deer are considered by the study to be reservoir species or species that can carry a disease and transmit it to other host species. 

Reservoir hosts can facilitate viral evolution changing the transmissablity and pathogenicity. 

The study also claims that prediction of how host species pass the virus can be hard to predict with multiple possible host species. 

Though the ability of the species to pass COVID-19 to humans and other species, the study states that deer are important economically to the U.S.

“Given the social relevance and economic importance of deer to the US economy, even though experimental evidence suggests that SARS-CoV-2 infected deer remain largely asymptomatic, the clinical outcomes and health implications of SARS-CoV-2 infection in free-living deer are unknown, and warrant further investigation,” the survey states.

Concern for environmental impacts of multiple host species, spreading COVID-19 amongst themselves is also noted in the study. 

This study is in its prepublishing stage and has not yet been peer-reviewed or fully published.

It was posted on Biorxiv, the preprint server for biology. The study can be viewed at https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.31.466677v2.full.