Six countries report coronavirus mutation at mink farms - WHO

The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Saturday that Denmark, the United States, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Spain have reported coronavirus cases cropping up among farmed minks.

The Danish government announced on Wednesday that a variant of COVID-19 found in Danish minks has been transmitted to 12 people, and the government would organize the euthanization of all minks in Denmark.

The Danish government has already responded to the threat posed by the mutated coronavirus by starting the culling of 17 million minks and shutting down the entire mink industry in the country, while applying severe local restrictions in the North Jutland region in the west of Denmark.

The North Jutland region is also preparing to mass test 280,000 citizens in seven affected municipalities, according to a press release issued by the region’s administration on Friday.

Soren Brostrom, the director general of the Danish Health Authority, has said he was confident and optimistic that the mutated mink-related coronavirus could be contained.

Addressing a press conference, Brostrom noted that despite the large reservoir of coronavirus in the minks and “the rapidly evolving transmission” in a number of areas across the country, Denmark had proven to have a “very large testing capacity, a good monitoring system and is able to work very closely with the national and local authorities to implement measures that will enable us to retain control of the epidemic.”

Five so-called clusters of coronavirus mutations derived from farmed minks in Denmark have now been found in 214 people, and the most problematic “cluster five” might have resistance to the antibodies with its “spike protein,” the Danish Statens Serum Institute (SSI) has said.

The WHO said on Friday it will review the biosafety of mink farms worldwide.

Source: Reuters