Six common wildlife species in Virginia have high rates of the virus that causes COVID-19 — a disease they likely contracted from humans.
The virus has been found in deer mice, Virginia opossums, raccoons, groundhogs, eastern rabbits and eastern red bats, according to discoveries in nature.
“I think the big take-home message is that the virus is pretty ubiquitous,” said Amanda Goldberg of the Department of Biological Sciences at Virginia Tech.
This meant little danger from wildlife to humans, the researchers found. There has been no evidence of humans contracting COVID-19 from wildlife.
The same did not happen the other way around. Animals that lived in places with high human traffic – such as hiking trails – had three times the levels of COVID-19 markers in their blood than animals further away from people.
For example, researchers found two mice on the same day with identical variants of COVID-19, suggesting they contracted it from the same human — or from each other.
The method of infection appeared to be discarding food from infected hikers, researchers said.
“The virus can jump from humans to wildlife when we are in contact with them, like a hitchhiker switching to a new, more suitable host,” said Carla Finkielstein of Virginia Tech.
The virus, Finkielstein added, “is indifferent whether its host walks on two or four legs. Your main goal is survival.”
For COVID-19, she said, “the goal… is to spread to survive.” With the vast majority of humans Protected from infection by vaccines, “the virus turns to animals”.
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