The cabinet has no signs yet that the coronavirus has mutated into mink, as happened in Denmark. “As far as we can see now, that is not the case in the Netherlands,” says healthcare minister Hugo de Jonge to questions from the Party for the Animals.
Denmark announced on Wednesday that it would kill millions of minks on farms in the country as a preventive measure for fear of the effect of the mutation. A corona vaccine might have little or no effect on the mutated variant. The ‘mink mutation’ was found in twelve Danes and they reacted poorly to antibodies against the well-known coronavirus.
There are “differences between the Netherlands and Denmark”, said De Jonge, but the Netherlands keeps in touch with the Danes and “we will see very carefully how that goes there”. The minister does not see much room for more robust intervention in mink breeding. The breeding of the fur animals will be banned from March, three years earlier than originally planned. The minister calls this “the most thorough measure”.
Corona has now been found on more than half of the mink farms in the Netherlands. The cabinet fears the emergence of ‘reservoirs’ where the virus can continue to exist, even if it dies out among people. This is mainly an issue in the long term, says the minister. “In the short term, the risk that you will be infected by your neighbor is really greater than that you will be infected by a mink”, says De Jonge.
By: ANP | Photo: ANP
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