Although not specifically mentioned in the paper, IMO farms and home gardens are a likely place for such pathogens to be exchanged.
Highlights from the paper (which is not peer-reviewed yet):
- "We evaluated 624 pre- and post-pandemic serum samples from wild deer from four U.S. states for SARS-CoV-2 exposure."
- "Antibodies were detected in 152 samples (40%) from 2021 using a surrogate virus neutralization test."
- "Seroprevalence for individual counties was highly clustered with nearly half of the 32 counties sampled showing no evidence of SARS-CoV-2 exposure"
- "Several potential transmission routes are possible for movement of this virus into wild deer populations. [..] including captive cervid operations, field research, conservation work, wildlife tourism, wildlife rehabilitation, supplemental feeding, and hunting."
- "Wildlife contact with contaminated water sources has also been offered as a potential transmission route, although transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 from wastewater has yet to be conclusively demonstrated. Transmission from fomites or other infected animal species cannot be discounted."
- "Besides health impacts to wildlife, persistent infections in a novel host could lead to adaptation, strain evolution, and re-emergence of strains with altered transmissibility, pathogenicity, and vaccine escape."
I'm more concerned about wastewater treatment plants
- "Could the deer spread the virus to people? There is no evidence that animals, including deer, are playing a significant role in the spread of SARS-CoV-2 to people."
- "Do deer show clinical signs of illness? This was not the focus of our study. However, there were no reports of clinical illness associated with SARS-CoV-2 in the deer populations we surveyed, and clinical signs of SARS-CoV-2 have not been observed in wild white-tailed deer. In addition, captive deer experimentally infected with SARS-CoV-2 as part of a USDA Agricultural Research Service study did not show clinical signs of illness."
[1] https://www.aphis.usda.gov/animal_health/one_health/download...
If there is strong evidence that some phenomena cannot occur (e.g., that there's an inherent barrier to deer-to-deer or deer-to-human transmission), then any further human risk is slight. If however there's merely a lack of evidence of various forms of transmission, then we can't be assured that there is no such transmission. (This was the case with airborne-transmission of COVID-19, early in the pandemic, where "no evidence" was broadly interpreted as "not possible", incorrectly as it turned out.)
I'll also note that the lack of symptomatic illness among deer does not mean that the virus doesn't spread and propagate within and from the deer population.
- The disease is likely to persist even if eradicated in humans.
- The disease will continue to mutate and evolve in this (and potentially other) animal populations.
- If North American wildlife are acquiring SARS-COV-2, then animal populations elsewhere are all but certainly doing so as well.
