By Bond Robertson 
It is absolutely amazing that such a high percentage of animals have become infected, Director of Game Health Knut Madeleine at the Veterinary Institute tells Nettavisen.
He talks about a survey conducted among American white-tailed deer in Ohio, USA. scanning, Which was published on the research site Nature, 35.8 percent of the animals examined were infected with at least three different types of COVID-19.
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The findings in Ohio mean that Norwegian researchers are now investigating whether COVID-19 is also present in Norway deer. So far, 150 to 200 gazelles have been studied. They have not yet found SARS-CoV-2 in Norwegian animals.
Increases danger to humans
– We examined deer, gazelle, elk and reindeer. We’ll investigate more animals in 2022, says Madeleine.
The researchers aren’t primarily afraid of deer infecting the virus, but the SARS-CoV-2 virus will find a host, where it can also mutate, and then spread a new infection with new species among humans.
Andrew Bowman, assistant professor at Ohio State University, tells research site EurekAlert! They knew from other studies that the animals had been exposed in the wild and that laboratory animals had infected each other.
– Here we see that they are infected in nature, and if they can keep the virus in, we have a new potential source of SARS-CoV-2 infection for humans. This means that in addition to keeping track of infections in humans, we should also monitor infections in deer, says Bowman EurekAlert!.
Infection between animals
And that’s exactly what researchers in Norway are doing.
I this dateWritten by Madeleine and Director of Research and Internationalization at the Veterinary Institute Carlos G. Das Neves, they have written about the risk of infection from animals to humans, and about studies in Norway.
Madslien and Neves also wrote in the article that the virus most likely came from animals in the first place, and that it likely crossed many species barriers before infecting early humans in China.
As early as January 2021, the WWF warned that wild animals could be carriers of SARS-CoV-2, and infect humans.
Read your own case: WWF warns of infection from wild animals
It is also known that humans can infect animals, such as our pets.
Read your own case: Corona virus can be transmitted from humans to dogs and cats