On Feb. 25, 2022, researchers announced that wildlife reservoirs of SARS-CoV-2 can lead to viral adaptation and spillback from wildlife to humans

Through a multidisciplinary research collaboration for SARS-CoV-2
surveillance in Canadian wildlife, identified a new and highly divergent lineage of SARS-CoV-2. This
lineage has 76 consensus mutations including 37 previously associated with non-human animal hosts, 23 of
which were not previously reported in deer.