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Deer Are a Public Health Problem. They Carry Diseases, Including COVID-19.

Hunters help track down new SARS-CoV-2 variants in deer

Gil Pires
Microbial Instincts
4 min readJan 20, 2023

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Photo by Chris F. on Pexels.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, scientist feared that Sars-CoV-2 might find new animal reservoirs, so they pooled through the usual suspects — rodents, raccoon dogs and other city dwellers, but as it turned out, the real threat were wild deer.

White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) are one of last century’s most successful conservation stories. Perhaps, too successful, some might say. Endemic to the American continent, these 6-feet tall beasts were heavily hunted down into the early 20th century. As more land was claimed each day for agriculture, wild habitats shrank, and deer populations collapsed.

That’s when North American states began to impose hunting restrictions, in fear of completely losing their game. They preserved open spaces and began importing new animals to depleted areas. Deer populations began to flourish once more.

Unfortunately, their main natural predators — wolves and mountain lions— were not equally cared for, which caused their numbers to decrease. And, while bobcats and coyotes do target wild deer, they mainly prey upon younger and weaker specimens due to their size — not breeding adult deer.

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Microbial Instincts
Microbial Instincts

Published in Microbial Instincts

Decoding the microbial angle to health and microbial world (under Medium Boost program).

Gil Pires
Gil Pires

Written by Gil Pires

Junior Consultant | MSc in Biotechnology

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