By Cara Murez
HealthDay Reporter
FRIDAY, Feb. 3, 2023 (HealthDay News) — While COVID-19 variants Alpha, Gamma and Delta are no longer circulating among humans, they continue to spread in white-tailed deer.
The animals are the most abundant large mammal in North America. Scientists aren’t sure whether the deer could act as long-term reservoirs for these obsolete variants.
In a new study, researchers at Cornell University, in Ithaca, N.Y., collected 5,700 deer lymph node samples from 2020 to 2022 in the state, comparing the genomic sequences of the variants found in deer with sequences of the same variants taken from humans across New York.
The…
