Not just humans: Study finds NYC omicron spike hit deer too

NEW YORK (AP) — When New York City’s COVID-19 rates spiked last December due to the emerging omicron variant, humans weren't the only mammals affected.

The highly infectious variant also hit the white-tailed deer population on Staten Island, the most suburban of the city's five boroughs, according to a study led by Penn State University scientists

The omicron variant was detected in nasal swabs from seven of 68 Staten Island deer tested between Dec. 13 and Jan. 31, according to the study, which was funded by the USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

It was already known that deer can catch COVID-19, after earlier variants were found in white-tailed deer in New York and several other states. But the Staten Island study is the first to find evidence of the omicron variant in deer or any wild animal population, Suresh Kuchipudi, a professor of virology at Penn State who led the research team, said Tuesday.

“This sort of opened up the possibility that, like the previous variants, omicron can and has spilled over into animals,” Kuchipudi said. “So therefore we need to continue to monitor.”

Although omicron has been found to cause generally milder COVID-19 symptoms in humans than previous versions of the virus, scientists worry that new variants could emerge that make people sicker.

Kuchipudi said the spillover of omicron from humans to deer sparks fears that new and possibly vaccine-resistant mutations could evolve undetected in non-human hosts.

“The major concern is that when we let the virus circulate in any animal host, in addition to humans, the complexity of virus evolution becomes very, very difficult to assess and comprehend,” he said. “So the bigger question is, the unmonitored or unchecked transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in deer and potentially other...