The unlikely spread among cattle and one dairy worker has scientists looking through the data to better understand this spillover. They say the risk to humans hinges on whether the virus can evolve in key ways to better infect mammals.
To better understand COVID-19's spread during the pandemic, public health officials have expanded wastewater surveillance. These efforts track SARS-CoV-2 levels and health risks among most people, but they miss people who live without shelter, a population particularly vulnerable to severe infection.
To fill this information gap, researchers reporting in Environmental Science & Technology Letters tested flood-control waterways near unsheltered encampments, finding similar transmission patterns as in the broader community and identifying previously unseen viral mutations.