COVID-stricken mink that have escaped from Danish farms could create a “permanent” reservoir for Sars-Cov-2 infection by bringing in the virus to the country’s wildlife and even potentially re-introducing it to humans, scientists cited by the Guardian warned.
Several thousand of mink annually escape from farms, said Sten Mortensen, Danish Veterinary and Food Administration’ veterinary research manager.
“We know that because they are an invasive species and every year hunters and trappers kill a few thousand wild mink. The population of escaped mink is quite stable”, he added.
According to the researcher, there is now a risk that around 5% of mink that run away from Danish farms could have been infected with coronavirus. Although the chance of them directly contaminating other animals was not very high due to these creatures “very solitary” nature, it still existed, Mortensen said. Thus, the animals most susceptible to transmission through feeding on infected mink or their faeces were ferrets, raccoon dogs or domestic cats.
Scientists from other countries have also been ringing alarm over potential spread of coronavirus from Danish mink, with Prof Marion Koopmans, who is the head of viroscience at Rotterdam’s Erasmus University, telling the Guardian in an emailed statement that “Sars-CoV-2 could potentially continue to circulate in large-scale farms or be introduced to escaped and wild mustelids.”
According to Koopmans, theoretically, this could create “a permanent pandemic threat to humans and animals”.
This concern is echoed by University College London’s microbiologist professor Joanne Santini, who said that once infected mammals such as mink are in the wild, “it will become extremely difficult to control its further spread to animals and then back to humans”.
Dead Mink Return to Then Get Burned
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said in early November that around 15-17 million of mink would be culled following discovery of a mutated version of coronavirus among these tiny carnivorous creatures.
The country’s research body the Statens Serum Institute then has identified several variants of Danish mink with COVID-19. One of it, known as C5, has risen particular concerns among scientists over efficiency of vaccine against it. Denmark’s health ministry, however, said last week that it was “very likely” that C5 mink variant was “extinct”.
Around 10 million mink have now been exterminated in Denmark through a mass gassing programme.
Several days ago news emerged that corpses of murdered animals have started to appear from the ground in the military training in Holsterbo area where they have been buried. The development took place as their tiny bodies have been pushed out of their shallow grave due to decomposition process that has been causing a gas release and corpses’ eventual expansion.
Denmark’s government was now considering exhuming buried mink and burning their remains, although this would require the approval of the country’s environmental agency, Minister of Agriculture Rasmus Prehn told the national broadcaster TV2 on Friday.
According to Prehn, he had “the desire to get rid of the minks and burn” them since the first day he had heard of the situation.
Crippled Industry
Denmark has long been the world’s largest exporter of mink fur, with nearly 1,000 of mink farms in the country. In lonely 2019, the industry had a turnover of nearly $800 mln, producing 24.5 million mink skins.
After the decision to slaughter millions of furry animals to prevent the spread of COVID came into force, the Danish government admitted that it had no legal basis. The mink massacre caused a strong outcry from the public, with the fur industry being nearly destroyed in the country and family breeders losing their jobs en masse. Following a backlash, Denmark's Minister of Agriculture Mogens Jensen resigned from the post last week.
However, officials have now been proposing to introduce a full ban on mink farming, which could last until 2022.
