Virginians might be giving animals COVID

The creatures in your backyard might have COVID.

Why it matters: It could be your fault.

The big picture: Virginia Tech researchers recently found that there's no evidence humans can get the virus from wildlife, but animals living in places with a lot of people are three times more likely to have traces of COVID in their blood than those not near us.

• A common culprit: infected hikers and their discarded food.
• Another: cities, potentially via wastewater and human waste — which Richmond has, uh, a lot of .

Between the lines: This means that humans could be the reason some animals are getting sick, according to the study published in Nature this week — around the same time the Virginia Department of Health recorded the highest number of new weekly cases statewide since February (about 6,000).

• And researchers, who sampled wildlife across 43 counties in Virginia and in D.C., say the animals they detected COVID in between May 2022 and September 2023 are commonly found nationwide.

Those six species are:

• Deer mouse.
• Virginia opossum (an unofficial Richmond mascot ).
• Raccoon.
• Groundhog.
• Eastern cottontail rabbit.
• Eastern red bat.

What's next: Researchers say it's important to better understand how wildlife are being infected and whether the virus could eventually evolve in animals in a way that presents a transmission risk to humans.

The bottom line: Human-to-wildlife transmission is likely happening across the U.S., and according to the CDC , that "wildlife" part could include your cats and dogs, too.