Hikers are infecting Virginia wildlife with COVID-19, study finds

Six common wildlife species in Virginia have high rates of the virus that causes COVID-19 — a disease they likely caught from humans.

The virus has been found in deer mice, Virginia opossum, raccoons, groundhogs, Eastern cottontails and Eastern red bats, according to findings in Nature.

“I think the big take home message is the virus is pretty ubiquitous,” said Amanda Goldberg of the Virginia Tech Department of Biological Sciences.

That meant little danger to humans from wildlife, researchers found. There was no evidence of humans catching COVID-19 from wildlife.

The same was not true in reverse. Animals living in sites with high human traffic — like hiking trails — had three times the levels of COVID-19 markers in their blood as animals farther from people.

For example, researchers found two mice on the same day with identical variants of COVID-19, which suggests they caught it from the same human — or each other.

The method of infection seemed to be discarded 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 rides to a new, more suitable host,” said Carla Finkielstein of Virginia Tech.

The virus, Finkielstein added, “is indifferent to whether its host walks on two legs or four. Its primary objective is survival.”

For COVID-19, she said, “the goal … is to spread in order to survive.” With the vast majority of humans protected from infection by vaccines, “the virus turns to animals.”