Study Shows Flies, Roaches Not Likely To Spread COVID-19

Insects like biting flies and cockroaches are not likely to spread the agent of COVID-19 to humans, according to a recently published article by Texas A&M AgriLife Research scientists.

Public health experts and officials now know much more about the spread of COVID-19, but concerns remained about how the virus spreads indirectly from human to human through contaminated surfaces, animals or insects.

Insects are known to spread many infectious diseases among humans, so evaluating the role of insects in the potential transmission of SARS-CoV-2 was a high priority in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to study co-author Gabriel Hamer, AgriLife Research entomologist in the Texas A&M Department of Entomology.

The team included Gabriel Hamer, Dr. Sarah Hamer, associate professor of epidemiology at Texas A&M’s College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, along with the help of research associates and graduate students and other faculty in the Department of Entomology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and School of Public Health. The lead author, Chris Roundy, was a post-doctoral student in the Department of Entomology at the time and is now working in the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

“We were sampling insects in homes with recent human COVID-19 cases, some of which also had dogs and cats actively infected with SARS-CoV-2,” Gabriel Hamer said. “We suspected these were high- risk environments where insects may be able to become contaminated with the virus if they were contacting the infected humans, animals or contaminated surfaces. Instead, we did not detect evidence of the virus in the sampled insects from these homes.”