The world continues to wind down from Covid monitoring, also worldometer is now scaling back:
Effective February 1, 2023, the Coronavirus Tracker has switched from LIVE to Daily Updates.
As a number of major countries have now transitioned to weekly updates, there is no need anymore for immediate updates throughout the day as soon as a new report is released. On January 29, 2020, Worldometer started tracking the coronavirus, providing the most timely and accurate global statistics to all users and institutions around the world at a time when this was extremely challenging. We thank everyone who participated in this extraordinary collaborative effort.
Still tracking, only 1.1 million new cases reported in the past 7 days (less than a third of the last week of December) and 9 thousand deaths (2/3rds of the last week of December). Reporting is dropping faster, yet deaths are under 10K a week again.
Meanwhile the virus seems to live on in the deer population
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/white-tailed-deer-harbouring-covid-19-variants-thought-to-be-nearly-extinct-in-humans-study-1.6259176
White-tailed deer may be a reservoir for COVID-19 variants of concern that no longer circulate among people, including Alpha, Delta and Gamma, according to new research out of Cornell University.
"Findings indicate that white-tailed deer – the most abundant large mammal in North America – may serve as a reservoir for variant SARS-CoV-2 strains that no longer circulate in the human population," the authors wrote, adding that the findings "raised concerns about the role of white-tailed deer in the epidemiology and ecology of the virus."
They also revealed that the viral RNA sequences in the deer were dramatically different from those in humans, suggesting the virus had adapted, or mutated, in its new hosts.
"Our analysis suggests the occurrence of multiple spillover events (human to deer) of the Alpha and Delta lineages with subsequent deer-to-deer transmission and adaptation of the virus," the authors wrote.
"Detection of VOCs in white-tailed deer long after their circulation in humans raises questions about whether deer, acting as a reservoir for the virus, could introduce the variants into other animal populations or even back into human populations. SARS-CoV-2 has also been detected in deer populations in Canada. The National Centre for Foreign Animal Disease in 2021 found deer in Quebec that appeared otherwise healthy were harbouring the virus.
"The findings are important in that they demonstrate that there is a risk of contact with infectious SARS-CoV-2 during handling and processing of white-tailed deer carcasses, which could lead to spillback via deer-to-human transmission of the virus," the authors wrote.
