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The fact that SARS-CoV-2 can infect animals is not new. The virus probably originated in an animal species and then jumped to humans, a process that scientists call spillover. Since the pandemic began, there have been documented cases of many animals getting the virus, with various degrees of illness.

Infections have turned up in cats, dogs, lions, tigers, pumas, ferrets, mink, certain rodents, snow leopards, and others. The CDC even has guidelines to protect pets from Covid-19. When a virus jumps from animals to humans and then back to animals, scientists call that spillback.

Most of these infections in animals appeared to be self-contained. An infected house cat presumably stays in the house when infected — it doesn’t start a chain of transmission. “They were all isolated cases,” Suresh Kuchipudi, a Penn State infectious disease researcher who collaborated with Kapur, says of known cases in animals.

The deer infections were different. “This is first time that a completely free-living animal species in the wild has been found to be infected, and that infection is widespread,” Kuchipudi says.

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White-tailed deer on Staten Island have tested positive for the virulent omicron COVID-19 variant, new research showed, adding to a growing body of research that shows widespread virus spillover from humans to deer populations.

A study that has not yet been peer-reviewed, published Monday in the preprint server bioxRiv, showed 19 of 131 deer sampled on Staten Island between Dec. 12, 2021 and Jan. 31, 2022, were positive for COVID-19 antibodies, indicating prior exposure to the coronavirus. The results mark the first time the variant has been discovered in wild animals.