Mass. is monitoring white-tailed deer for COVID. Here's why.
Mass Wildlife Deer & Moose Biologist Martin Feehan prepares to insert a cotton swab into the nose of a dead 160-pound deer buck, found in Needham, to test it for the presence of the COVID-19 virus. Deer across the country have been found to carry COVID-19. State wildlife researchers are assisting with a federal project to better understand the impact of the virus on the deer population.
The deer died of a broken leg, after it was apparently hit by a car in Needham. Feehan, a deer and moose biologist, had brought it to headquarters to test it for COVID."We go all the way in, and the idea is to saturate as much as the swab as possible," he said, rotating the swab in tiny circles."Just like every sampling that’s done for humans."This COVID test is bound for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Wildlife Research Center in Colorado.
"We do know that at this point, every place that [deer] have been tested, there have been antibodies found," Feehan said."Whether it's transmitting amongst deer populations, whether they’re contracting it somewhere in the environment — or any other mode that they’re getting it — it is transmitting regularly to deer.
"I certainly wouldn't have expected to hear about that level, that number of individuals in a population having been exposed or being actively infected," she said.
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