Millions of NYC rats are carriers of COVID-19

A study has shown that millions of rats in New York may be carriers of COVID-19. The findings suggest that the coronavirus could be transmitted from humans to urban rodents on a large scale. They came after the FBI director’s comments rekindled a bitter debate in the US about the alleged origin of the disease – and American suspicion once again fell on the Chinese lab.

Researchers have found that millions of rats living across New York City are susceptible to COVID-19, reports Sky News.

Like humans, rodents have been shown to be vulnerable to numerous variants of the coronavirus, from the original to Omicron, including high levels of infection in their upper and lower respiratory tracts.

A 2021 World Health Organization (WHO) report concluded that the coronavirus was “probably” transmitted from bats to humans through an unknown animal.

Since then, human-to-animal transmission has been reported, including in pets.

Researchers at the University of Missouri studied whether New York rats could be infected, given the sheer number of rats living in the American metropolitan area.

There are about eight million wild rats in the “Big Apple”, as New York is known, and they are also widespread in other urban areas of the United States.

A peer-reviewed study published in the American Society for Microbiology’s journal mBio says it’s vital to determine if wild animals could be infected on a large scale in order to track how the virus might evolve.

“To our knowledge, this is one of the first studies to show that variants of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) can cause infections in feral rat populations in a major U.S. urban area,” said study lead author Dr Henry Wang. .

With permission from local officials, researchers conducted two rat-trapping operations in and around the city’s sewer systems, mostly in Brooklyn.

Sewer surveillance has been used during the pandemic to detect disease levels.

Biologists collected and processed samples from 79 rats captured between September and November 2021 and found that 13 of them (16.5%) had COVID-19.

In terms of the total estimated population, this would mean more than 1.3 million infected rats in New York.

Dr. Wang, who specializes in emerging infectious diseases, says the findings support the joint role humans and animals can play during a pandemic.

“It is important that we continue to expand our understanding so that we can protect the health of both humans and animals,” says the professor. “Our results highlight the need for further monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 in rat populations to determine if the virus is circulating in animals.” and whether it evolves into new strains that may pose a risk to humans.”

Previous research has warned that as community transmission wanes, COVID in animals could become “increasingly important […] potential source of re-introduction of the virus to humans.

However, the alleged zoonotic origin of the virus (from animal to human) has been called into question in recent weeks after the FBI director said the US intelligence agency believes it “most likely” came from a leak from a Chinese lab.

This theory has been circulating since the initial outbreak in Wuhan, China more than three years ago, but the WHO’s official position is that it remains “highly unlikely”.