First Discovery of Omicron in Non-Humans Found in Staten Island Deer Population

Even if we’re entering a COVID pause as Omicron leaves the state, the watch for the next-generation variant has already begun in a most unlikely locale. On Staten Island in New York, Penn State University researchers have discovered white-tailed deer infected with Omicron, the first discovery of its kind in non-humans, increasing the concern about a new coronavirus strain.

Close to 15 percent of blood and nasal swab samples from 131 captured deer revealed virus antibodies, suggesting the animals had been infected and now vulnerable to repeated re-infections with new variants. The virus could spread among the deer population, possibly to humans and, more ominously, evolve into a new variant.

Human-to-animal transmission isn’t new. (Click here.) In 2020-21, before Omicron, the Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Service found COVID antibodies in serum samples of 481 deer in 15 states. (There have been no reports of virus exposure among Connecticut’s white-tailed deer populations.)

The USDA previously identified COVID-19 in dogs, cats, lions, tigers, snow leopards, otters, minks and gorillas.

In the Staten Island samples — pictured above, a deer in a Staten Island wildlife sanctuary — researchers found at least one deer with both the virus and high levels of antibodies against it, the equivalent of a breakthrough infection. The reliance on epidemiologists will not end with Omicron’s departure.

“Epidemiology can apply to many different things, especially with regard to medicine,” says Dr. Ulysses Wu, Hartford HealthCare’s System Director of Infection Disease and Chief Epidemiologist. “But it also applies to non-medical things as well. It’s basically looking at the statistics with regard to certain populations, whether it be human, animal or mammal — whatever it may be. From my standpoint, it’s from an infectious standpoint.”

The Penn State study, published on bioRxiv and not yet peer-reviewed, leaves a partial trail for epidemiologists: How transmissible is the virus from human to deer, then from deer to human?