Virologist from Edmundston thinks of N.B. deer as she studies COVID-19

Having grown up in Edmundston, Dr. Samira Mubareka says she's well aware of the interaction between New Brunswickers and deer in her home province. 

It's in the back of her mind, as she and other Canadian researchers look for evidence that COVID is mutating in animal populations to the extent that if it jumps back to people it would be vaccine-resistant. 

"There's this possibility of his parallel evolution where the virus continues to change to the point where it looks very, very different from the virus circulating in humans," said Mubareka, an infectious diseases physician at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto.

"Then vaccination efforts could be undermined."

SARS-CoV-2 has now been detected in white-tailed deer in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec.

And there's robust evidence, Mubareka said, that in one Ontario case, a variant of the virus was transmitted from deer to human. 

Part of that evidence is how closely the genetic building blocks of the virus samples matched, and how different they were from samples taken from other people and other deer. 

Mubareka said it wasn't a big surprise when the genome sequences of COVID found in Quebec deer resembled the Delta strain of COVID that infected people around the same time. 
 
"But when we looked at Ontario, it was a completely different story," she said. "It doesn't look like anything else that's been circulating in humans." 

The exception, however, turned out to be one person.  

Mubareka said the virus found in that individual "matched extremely well" with the "very, very divergent variant" found in the Ontario deer. 

Other facts also pointed to a link. 

"Same time frame, same region in southwestern Ontario," Mubareka said. "And we know this individual had contact with deer. So all that epidemiological evidence suggests that these really are related." 

Mubareka said the story seemed to end there, and there was no evidence that this one individual infected any other person. 

"A variant of concern like Delta or Omicron or Alpha are variants that have demonstrated increased transmission potential and, or, increased severity," she said.

"We're not seeing this with this [Ontario deer] virus, so I hope this reassures people a little bit," she said.

Deer behaviour changing

Biologist Philip Wiebe said most New Brunswickers probably don't have to worry about catching COVID from white-tailed deer because the animals are too wild and skittish to get close. 

Even suburban deer are likely to bolt when humans approach, said Wiebe, who has spent years studying deer activity in New Brunswick. 

But in the north of the province, some deer seem to be losing their fear, he said, because of feeding programs aimed at helping the deer survive harsh winters.

"They're putting out bales of hay and replacing them through the winter … and in some places, they're feeding them right out of their hands," Wiebe said.

"They're getting to the point where they're potentially putting saliva in people's hands.' 

N.B. deer test negative 

A few months ago, New Brunswick sent 40 nasal samples taken from hunted white-tailed deer to a federal lab in Saskatoon.

The deer were hunted between Nov. 10 and 19 near Saint John and Hampton.

So far, none has tested positive, according to analysis by Environment and Climate Change Canada's wildlife health laboratory. 

If any were to test positive, the public would be notified.