CLEVELAND, Ohio — White-tailed deer across Northeast Ohio are contracting COVID-19, according to a study that tested hundreds of deer.
According to a news release from Ohio State University, researchers tested 360 deer between January and March in nine different locations across the area. In six of the locations deer tested positive, and 129 (35.8%) had the virus.
“The working theory based on our sequences is that humans are giving it to deer, and apparently we gave it to them several times,” said Andrew Bowman, associate professor of veterinary preventative medicine and lead author on the study. “We have evidence of six different viral introductions into those deer populations. It’s not that a single population got it once and it spread.”
Three different variants were found, with the delta variant not being one of them. Researchers found that deer living near more humans were infected more often, according to the study.
Deer could have gotten infected by drinking contaminated water, the study said.
The worry, Bowman said, is that deer could hold the virus and be a source to infect humans in the future.
“Based on evidence from other studies, we knew they were being exposed in the wild and that in the lab we could infect them and the virus could transmit from deer to deer. Here, we’re saying that in the wild, they are infected,” Bowman said in the news release. “And if they can maintain it, we have a new potential source of SARS-CoV-2 coming in to humans. That would mean that beyond tracking what’s in people, we’ll need to know what’s in the deer, too.”