In the fur farm of the Lithuanian company “Danmink” in Jonava district of Lithuania, where after the discovery of the new coronavirus both workers and mink are expected to sleep a total of 40,000 animals, they will be stored in freezers for weeks, hoping to destroy the virus and use mink skins later, and Marjus Masjulis, Head of the Operational Response Service of the Veterinary Service (SFVS).
The farm is reported to hold a total of about 59,000 mink owned by Danmink and its main shareholder, Vilkijos ūkis. Part of the farm will try to keep it going to keep going.
According to Masjulis, the dead mink are planned to be left unshelled in the freezer for a period of a few to more than ten weeks, during which time the virus should die.
“On the skins [vīruss] may last only about a week, but in the further processing, drying or chemical treatment, the virus is destroyed at all, “said a spokesman for the service.
He said blood samples from dead mink were to be taken and the SFVS would determine if the animals were already infected with Covid-19, or if they were still ill but asymptomatic or not infected at all.
The service will decide later on the use of the skin, but before that it is planned to send samples of both infected workers and dead animals to the World Health Organization (WHO) laboratory “to study who infected it,” Masjulis explained.
The virus was discovered on the farm last week, but this week an emergency situation was declared in Jonava district so that it would be possible to provide compensation for the destruction of mink. The emergency situation concerns only the agricultural sector and will not affect the entire population of the municipality.
Infection has so far been detected in four farm workers.
According to Masjulis, the dormancy of the mink is carried out according to a detailed plan to stop the further spread of the virus.
At the end of last week, the virus was also discovered in two employees of a Radviliškis district animal husbandry. According to the head of the company “Šiaures lape”, 50,000 mink were already put to sleep on this farm on Friday, but this was not done due to the spread of the coronavirus, but through the “normal procedure”, because the animals have reached the appropriate age. The infected workers had no direct contact with live mink.
As reported, in early November, the Danish government announced that new unique variants of the virus had been identified in tests performed on a number of mink farms and people living in their vicinity. Mules are the only animals that have been shown to be able to infect the new coronavirus from humans or to infect humans themselves. Epidemiologists are concerned that the spread of coronavirus in fur farms may lead to new mutations that could adversely affect the efficacy of potential vaccines. At the same time, it could endanger the entire mink farming industry.
In Denmark, mass destruction of mink began, but later foci of infection were also found on mink farms in Spain, Italy, the USA, the Netherlands, Sweden and Greece. It was announced last week that the virus had also been found on a mink farm in northern Poland.
In Lithuania, all mink farms have recently been inspected for prophylactic purposes, and it was announced earlier last week that none of them had the virus detected. Mink farmers must inform the SFVS on a weekly basis if the animals have died. In addition, the import of live mink from countries where outbreaks of the virus have been detected in fur farms has been banned in Lithuania since mid-November.
According to SFVS data, more than 1.6 million mink are currently kept on 86 Lithuanian farms.
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