There are few places in the world that are still enforcing pandemic restrictions, and most of the world seems to have decided to “moved on” from COVID, so to speak. But the virus hasn’t gone away—far from it, SARS-CoV-2 is now a part of our world, like the common cold and influenza before it. The continued circulation of COVID means newer and more dangerous variants have the potential to rise and spread through populations, potentially endangering millions.
One of the ways new variants may arise isn’t even through human populations—it’s in other animals. SARS-CoV-2 has been known to infect a host of different animals, including cats, dogs, deer, rodents, apes, and many kinds of livestock. It only takes a few mutations to allow those species-specific variants to jump ship into humans—and if they mutated well enough, they can evade previous immunities granted to us by vaccination or through prior infection.
To combat this, a group of researchers led by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign virologist Ying Fang have developed a brand new “all species” coronavirus test. It looks for antibodies that have been produced in response to the virus’ N-protein, which is embedded in the structure that is contained within its membrane.
“The N-protein is more abundant and it is more conserved than the proteins used in most tests,” Fang said in a press release—meaning that the structure is less prone to mutation and therefore found across COVID variants that are known to affect different species. Any animal that has been infected by COVID will presumably develop antibodies that are targeted against the N-protein.
So the new test, described in a new study published Thursday in the journal mSphere, looks for these proteins. If an animal is positive for a COVID infection, a serum sample from the animal will test positive for the anti-N-protein antibodies. A secondary test is then deployed that is designed to safeguard against a false positive.
The method was used to detect COVID infections for various animals known to be positive. It boasted a 97 percent sensitivity (ability to determine a true positive result) and 98 percent specificity (ability to determine a true negative result).
Fang and her team hope that scientists now have a better tool at their disposal to identify COVID outbreaks in different animal populations early in order to mobilize public health efforts quickly to prevent cross-species infection. This could especially be useful in areas of the world where human and animal populations interact and encounter each other regularly, such as farmlands or rural communities. As the last few months have demonstrated, there is still much we don’t understand about COVID or the SARS-CoV-2 virus—the threat of a new variant is far from over.
