Vaughn Cooper sees white-tailed deer every day in his neighborhood outside Pittsburgh.
"We were not expecting to find this level of widespread infection," Suresh Kuchipudi, associate director of the Animal Diagnostic Laboratory at Penn State, told Insider.Scientists worry that deer could serve as a reservoir for the coronavirus, even afterbecomes endemic in humans. In the worst-case scenario, the virus might evolve in deer to become better at evading vaccine protection, then spill over into humans as a more lethal variant.
"Could deer become a host that gives rise to successful lineages in humans? I still think it's unlikely," Cooper said, adding,"We're actually becoming a harder population to invade because the leading virus is so prevalent."Deer aren't the only animals that can contract coronavirus infections.in cats, dogs, ferrets, mink, pigs, and rabbits.
For deer to infect humans directly,"you'd basically need to be a hunter," Cooper said. It's also possible that deer could pass the virus to humans through an intermediate host, such as a rodent or household pet.
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