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Asked by anon-308651 on 11 Jan 2022.
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Samuel Ellis answered on 11 Jan 2022:
The COVID virus only infects animals, so would not affect plants we eat. Plants do have many viruses which specifically target them, some of which are major problems for crops in farming. In theory COVID could evolve to become a threat to animals we farm for food, but that has not been an issue so far
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David Burnett answered on 11 Jan 2022: last edited 11 Jan 2022 11:59 am
Hi Abby! This is a great question!
The virus that causes COVID-19 is specialised at infecting and growing in the cells of humans and mammals. It uses a protein on the outside of these cells called ACE-2 to recognise them and get into the cells to grow. Plants don’t have the ACE-2 protein on them so the COVID virus can’t use it to get into the plant cells.
Plants also have very different biology to human and mammal cells-they are surrounded by a thick layer called a cell wall. Plant viruses have adapted ways to pass between plant cells but since the COVID virus originated in mammals it can’t do this.
The COVID virus has been shown to be able to infect some animals but I don’t know if there have been any outbreaks on farms.
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Eddie Cano Gamez answered on 11 Jan 2022:
Hi Abby! As Samuel and David already said, the SARS-CoV-2 virus cannot infect plants because it needs the ACE2 protein (which is only present in animals) to enter cells. However, it infecting animals remains a possibility.
As far as I know, there have not been any reports of COVID-19 in farm animals, but it was recently reported that the virus is spreading in wild deer in North America. Scientists there sampled a large number of deer and found that almost a third of them may have been infected by the virus. We know this because they have antibodies against it. There is a lot we do not yet know though: how did they get infected? can they transmit the virus to other deer? do they get any COVID-19 symptoms, like us humans do? and could they eventually transmit the virus to other animal species, like farm animals? We need a lot more research to answer this. What we can say is that this pandemic is not only affecting us humans: it also changes other species around us in ways we don’t yet fully understand.
If you want a more detailed story about COVID-19 in wild deer, do check this link: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02110-8
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Melanie Krause answered on 11 Jan 2022:
Hi Abby,
The virus currently infects humans and quite a few animal species (pretty much only mammals though).. but plants are very different from animals both in their DNA but also in their life cycle, their immune system and many other things.. there are viruses that can infect plants but they don’t usually infect humans and human viruses don’t infect plants… in order to infect plants the virus would have to mutate a LOT and while it does mutate, for it to mutate this much is pretty much impossible..
Also the virus is transmitted in animals via droplets that we breath out.. for plants the virus would have to come up with a whole new spreading mechanism 😉 -
Sareen Galbraith answered on 11 Jan 2022:
It is very possible for COVID (SARS-CoV-2) to mutate. We have seen this already because we know a lot about the different variants -example delta and omicron.
COVID doesnt infect plants, but it does infect some animals. You might have heard about some zoo animals getting infected with COVID?
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