Don't panic, but researchers theorize that rats may be the origin of a mystery COVID variant in New York City
Photo: Gary Hershorn/Getty Images Over the past year, scientists keep seeing a COVID-19 oddity showing up in New York City’s sewer system: bits and pieces of virus in the wastewater that suggest there’s a mysterious new variant in the city. Thankfully, there’s no evidence that it’s particularly infectious or deadly. But scientists aren’t sure where the “cryptic lineages,” as researchers call the fragments, are coming from.
John Dennehy: 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. We’ve never detected live virus in the wastewater. But given the volume of wastewater and the number of rats, it’s certainly possible that they’ve gotten infected that way.Johnson: There was a figure in the paper where we actually show that these lineages have all gained the ability to utilize the rat receptor.
Monica Trujillo: I think the important thing to keep in mind here is that every time the virus replicates, it has a possibility to mutate. So if there is a population where you are not aware where the virus is replicating, that is worrisome. That is why it’s important to know where these cryptic sequences are coming from.Dennehy: Not that we know of. Omicron is possibly hypothesized to come from animals in Africa, but that’s not proven.
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