A deer eyes a human walking the Sawyer Camp Trail alongside the Lower Crystal Springs Reservoir, Wednesday, May 19, 2021, in Burlingame, California. - Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group/TNS
The COVID virus has been found in a deer in the Sierra Nevada, representing the first detection of the pathogen in California’s free-ranging wildlife. The discovery, revealed in a new analysis of a sample from a mule deer buck collected in 2021, has no immediate consequence for people. There is already much human-to-human transmission, and vaccines largely protect us. But the finding, announced by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, adds to the growing concern by scientists that animals could act as a hiding place for the virus, perhaps breeding dangerous variants that cause new ou...
