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Things got less reassuring when the researchers obtained genomes from some of these samples. All turned out to be distantly related from the rest of the SARS-CoV-2 family tree—roughly as distant from the common ancestor of the pandemic as the omicron variant is. Their closest relatives turned out to be a lineage that had spread from humans to mink in Michigan that had been identified about a year earlier. But in the intervening time, the lineage had picked up 76 additional mutations—in fact, all the genomes had some small differences with each other.

The team also found a single additional genome belonging to this same lineage. This one was isolated from a human during the same time period and in the same region as the survey of deer. The individual had had contact with deer, suggesting the virus may have jumped back from deer to humans.