Story at a glance
- Denmark is the world’s largest producer of mink pelts, but this is the first outbreak among the country’s mink population.
- More than 570,000 of the animals were recently ordered to be culled in the neighboring Netherlands after the virus was detected at 13 different farms there, according to Reuters.
- Genetic and epidemiological investigations have shown at least two farm workers in the Netherlands caught the virus from mink, the only patients anywhere known to have become infected by animals, Reuters reported last month.
Authorities in Denmark have ordered a mink farm to kill all 11,000 of its animals after they were found to be infected with COVID-19, Reuters reports.
Denmark is the world’s largest producer of mink pelts, but this is the first outbreak among the country’s mink population. More than 570,000 of the animals were recently ordered to be culled in the neighboring Netherlands after the virus was detected at 13 different farms there, according to Reuters.
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“The government has decided, on a precautionary principle, that the infected mink stock will be culled to minimize the risk of potential spread of the disease,” the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration said in a statement to Reuters Wednesday.
Danish authorities believe the outbreak spread from a human handler who tested positive for COVID-19 and that the virus jumped to the farm’s animal population. It’s not clear how many of the animals have been confirmed to be infected.
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Outbreaks of coronavirus on mink farms in the Netherlands were first reported in April, when signs of respiratory disease were observed among the animals on two farms close to the Belgian border. By the end of the month, more than 2 percent of the mink died on one farm, while more than 1 percent died on the other.
Genetic and epidemiological investigations have shown at least two farm workers in the Netherlands caught the virus from mink, the only patients anywhere known to have become infected by animals, Reuters reported last month.
“This is the first time we’ve found, at least we’ve shown that it’s likely, that in two cases the infection has gone from animal to human,” the Netherland’s Institute for Health’s director Jaap van Dissel said in a testimony to parliament last month. “Of course the original source of infection in China was also very likely animals.”
While several cases of COVID-19 infections passed from humans to animals have been reported in cats, dogs, tigers ferrets and other animals, there are no known cases of transmission from these species back into the human population.
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