The rat population in New York City may be the source of the next COVID-19 as new research published in the journal Nature Communications sought to trace the origins of mysterious viral pieces discovered in Big Apple's sewage.

An unknown strain of the virus detected in the city's wastewater might be rat-born, according to a team of researchers from Texas A&M-San Antonio and Queensborough Community College in New York City. One researcher noticed that the variant includes amino-acid alterations that are similar to previous rat-born virus strains, which gave rise to their notion.

New York City Might Have Rat-Born COVID-19 Variant

The discovery of COVID-19 in wild animals is concerning because it suggests that the virus can continue to circulate undetected indefinitely and potentially return to people in a new, unrecognizable form. Virologists are on high alert because whitetail deer, for example, are thought to be easily infected with the virus.

According to Curbed, one of the researchers acquired rat excrement samples for this experiment by just strolling around dark alleys and collecting any that they could find. Rats are thought to have taken up the virus by ingesting human and other animal waste and drinking sewage water.

It's too early to say what the next COVID -19 strain will look like, but the researchers believes the city's rodents might be the source. To humans, this may seem benign because the majority of people prefer to avoid social contact with rats, but it still poses a serious hazard.

Dr. Chris Thompson, an associate professor of biology at Loyola University Maryland, every time a virus infects wild animals, it poses a higher risk to people. COVID-19 cases have been detected in whitetail deer, for example, indicating that the virus may be transmitted between species in humans. When the virus infects animals such as bats, birds, and pigs, which have been demonstrated to be capable of transmitting the virus to people, the situation becomes much more alarming.

The most widely accepted idea for the virus's genesis in Wuhan is that it began in the city's bat population before spreading to people. If COVID-19 makes its way back into the human population from the animal realm, it may have mutated to the point where the global COVID-19 knowledge library may no longer be useful, according to Daily Mail.

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Is This Another Threat to Humans?

John Dennehy, a virologist at Queens College who co-authored the study, described how the variation may have come from rats. "They're probably drinking sewer water, and I heard they eat feces, so if there's any clumps of material in the wastewater, I'm sure they might try to consume it," Dennehy said.

To conduct their investigation, the authors of the study got down and filthy. According to Johnson, "brave" undergraduate students isolated RNA from rat feces samples while avoiding taking a smell. Rats in the city were not found to be carriers of COVID-19, but they were identified as "possible candidates" for a future COVID-19 variation, according to the study's findings.

The initial COVID-19 strain does not infect rodents, but the Alpha, Beta, and Gamma strains do, according to Johnson. If emerged from rodents, the best-case situation would be that it exclusively infects rats and loses the capacity to infect people, and the worst-case scenario would be if it spreads to humans and becomes Pi, the new version.

Unsequenced human strains, according to some experts, are the source of the most recent coronavirus version. In 2020, behind Chicago and Los Angeles, New York City came in third place on the Orkin's list of the world's spookiest cities, Metro reported.

Related Article: Omicron Found in New York Deer Raises Fears of COVID-19 Evolution

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