Cummings vet school to research whether COVID can be harbored in wildlife

PHOTO| Rick Saia Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine

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By Isabel Tehan

Researchers at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University in North Grafton are investigating new ways to monitor COVID-19 levels in animal wildlife as part of a two-year contract from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“The main question for this study is simply, can wild animals serve as a potential reservoir host for SARS-CoV-2 in a public health context? If the answer is yes, then there are lots of questions within that,” Dr. Jonathan Runstadler, chair of the department of infectious disease and global health at Cummings School, said in a Nov. 13 announcement from the school.

Runstadler’s lab began research on animal-human transmission of COVID during 2020, according to the announcement. The USDA is funding the new research.

The researchers use swab samples to detect SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in a variety of domestic and wild animals.

“The USDA wants to conduct more thorough surveillance sampling than has been done previously to know if and when the virus gets into species that we previously had not known could be infected,” Runstadler said.

The goal is to determine if some species may serve as likely to serve as hosts to COVID-19 and potentially pass it onto humans and endanger public health, according to the announcement.