Where the Deer and the Antelope Play
SARS-CoV-2, in the realm of coronaviruses, has a very broad species range. ~ Laura Bashor Colorado State University It raises the urgent question -- we know the deer are effectively transmitting virus among themselves, and then who are they giving it to? ~ Suresh Kuchipudi Pennsylvania State University, I was reading a news article about the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in the white-tailed deer ( Odocoileus virginianus ) population. I looked out my window and there were two white-tailed deer munching grass in the field next to the house. The news article was based on this paper that described sampling 283 white-tailed deer retropharyngeal lymph nodes and found that 94 (33%) of the deer tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. The authors indicate that infections likely resulted from multiple human-to-deer spillover and deer-to-deer transmission events. I thought it might be interesting to see if there was genomic data with Odocoileus virginianus as...