Despite extensive research, it remains unclear how the coronavirus was able to spread across various mink farms in Brabant. No clear distribution route or clearly identifiable source has been found. This is stated in a letter that was sent to the House of Representatives on Friday by ministers De Jonge (Public Health) and Schouten (Agriculture). For example, it was not the food.
In Brabant, more than thirty mink farms had to be culled in the autumn of 2020 after corona infections in the animals. It was unclear at the time how the coronavirus could reach various mink farms in Brabant, Limburg and Gelderland.
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“Many of the infected mink farms were within a few kilometers of each other,” the letter reads. “Particularly for the largest virus cluster, there seems to have been a greater chance of infection if another infected company was nearby. No explanation has been found for this possible association.”
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Things went wrong at farms in Venhorst, Haps, Wilbertoord and Overloon, among others. A stopper scheme was subsequently introduced whereby mink farmers could stop breeding the animals with financial aid.
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People may have transmitted the virus. “In any case, it has not been spread through the air,” an epidemiologist emphasized in September 2020 in de Volkskrant.
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Measures
But the people who would then have unknowingly spread it cannot be traced and it is also not clear how the virus then spread, according to the letter to parliament. “The measures taken probably contributed to the fact that the virus was not spread to mink farms in other parts of the Netherlands.”
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The coronavirus that was found in the minks has only been transmitted to few people, the researchers note. Most infections occurred in people with a link to mink farming.
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