Danes worried about new coronavirus mutation

Denmark kills all mink in the country after a mutated virus has passed from animals to humans. “The effect of a future vaccine is in danger of being undermined.”

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All Danish minks must be killed after the new coronavirus has mutated among these fur animals. Humans are infected with the mutated variant. “This could have serious consequences for the global approach to the pandemic,” Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said at a press conference yesterday.

“There is a risk that the effect of a future vaccine will be weakened, or in the worst case undermined,” said the Danish prime minister.

According to the Danish newspaper Politics antibodies had already been shown to react weakly to the mutated virus. The suspected variant of the sars-CoV-2 virus has already been found on five mink farms and twelve people are currently known to be infected with it.

Danish epidemiologist Kare Molbak also warned at the press conference that in the worst-case scenario the pandemic will restart ‘this time in Denmark’. The World Health Organization (WHO) has now been informed of the discovery.

There are 15 to 17 million minks in Denmark. The country is the largest producer of mink fur in the world. Among other things, the army will be used to kill the entire mink population.

To date, corona infections have already been detected in more than 200 of the 1,100 Danish mink farms.

Other countries are also struggling with outbreaks in mink farms that they cannot control. In the Netherlands, this corona crisis wiped out half of the mink sector, De Volkskrant writes. At our northern neighbors, more than 2 million minks have been killed because of corona. It is still not completely clear how the virus gets into mink farms and apparently can spread unhindered there.

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