DThe country’s largest mink herd – the world’s largest mink herd – is being warned this week to stop the spread of the SARS-Cove-2 virus to valuable fur species due to the world’s largest – potentially dangerous mutation.
Inter-species jumps of the virus make scientists nervous – as they suggest potentially significant mutations resulting from the jump. In this case, the Danish authorities say they have found some genetic changes that currently impair the effectiveness of the Covid-19 vaccine in development.
But is this recent turn in the Kovid-19 saga deeply troubling? Some experts consulted the state which suggests that the answer to this question may not be.
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“It all hits scary buttons,” noted Carl Bergstrom, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Washington. But Bergstrom and others argued that by looking closely at the virus that infects mink bears, it leads to nightmare stress that is more effective at infecting people than the current human virus.
“I do not believe that the stress of accepting a dip lowers the risk to humans,” said Francois Boulex, director of the Genetics Institute at University College London.
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“We can never rule anything, but in principle it should not be. It should definitely not increase the transmission. I don’t see any good reason why this should make the virus more serious, “he said.
Let’s take a look at what is known about the Danish situation, why inter-species jumps make scientists nervous, how mutations affect the effectiveness of vaccines, and why Boulex thinks the situation is “wonderfully interesting.”
What is happening in the state of Denmark?
Denmark is the world’s largest mink producer; It produces about 28% of the supply of this luxury fur.
Unfortunately, mink is susceptible to the SARS-2 virus, a fact that came to light in April when the Netherlands reported an outbreak on a mink farm there. Infected humans who work on farms transmit the virus to captive minks, which are kept in the surrounding ideal areas for rapid transition from mink to mink.
Occasionally, mink infects people – a phenomenon reported in both the Netherlands and Denmark. In a statement, the Danish Ministry of Environment and Food said the country’s population would be estimated at about 17 million animals – after believing in a mutation from mink to a virus that it believed could prevent the virus-producing immunity. By the Covid-19 vaccine.
Why do they think the mutated virus will stay away from the vaccine?
It is unknown at this time what he will do after leaving the post. While some information about the recorded change has been published, it is not yet enough to support such a bold claim, said Marianne Coopmans, head of virology at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, where many Dutch mink outbreaks have been analyzed.
“That’s a very big statement,” Coopmans said. “One change, I don’t expect it to have a dramatic effect.”
Outside experts do not use genetic sequencing information, said Emma Hodcroff, a nuclear pathologist at the Institute for Social and Preventive Medicine in Bern, Switzerland. But Denmark on Thursday uploaded 500 genetic sequences into open databases for scientists around the world, and hundreds more are expected to be added in the coming days.
Experts will focus on the sequence that Danes is looking for and try to determine what effect the change would have if the virus in it infected people.
For now, though, Hodcroft agrees with Coopman. “It never happens that it’s such a simple story of a change and all your vaccines stop working.”
It is, obviously, more concerned with how the ad was handled than the findings it found itself. “It puts scientists and the public in a really difficult position when we have such statements for which we have very little information or context,” Hodcroff said. “These things are never necessarily black and white.”
What is the big thing about species jumping?
The leaps and bounds have always made scientists nervous. One such incident, after all, is how we ended up with the Kovid-19 epidemic.
Viruses that usually infect one type of animal – let’s use bats for example – can cause serious illness in a new species if the virus is able to infect effectively if it finds a way to enter another species. The virus can spread to new species – local.
For example, four coronaviruses – cousins of SARS-2 – are thought to have caused the common cold that has flowed into humans from other species at some point in the past. The incidence of flu virus spillovers – from poultry or pigs – occurs periodically. The 2009 H1N1 epidemic began when people became infected with the flu virus in pigs.
“After years of battling viral spillovers such as the Ebola outbreak as well as the previous coronavirus jumps like the 2003 SARS epidemic, people think these events are worrying,” Bergstrom said.
But this is a different situation, he said. It is not an unintentional virus for humans that has jumped from animal species. In this situation, a virus that has already adapted to spread among the people went to the monks and now occasionally jumps back.
Bergstrom thinks it is prudent to shut down the mink mob of the Danish government. But he’s not sure if the changes in mink make the virus worse in humans.
“When something from a distant species comes to a nearby species, we get scared before the epidemic. Our intuition is not entirely appropriate for what happens in the middle of an epidemic when something goes from us to a distant species and then comes back. ”He said.
Boulex and others suggested that the changes seen in the mink virus could be a sign of a virus that infects minks – which can make the virus less effective in people over time.
Capturing spillover in real time
Boolox poses a risk that makes a spillover “really, really small” in humans.
But he said being able to capture in real time when a spillover occurs is exceptional, and charting genetic changes from scratch.
Usually when such events occur humans only walk when the virus is adapted to spread among the people. For example, the initial changes that enabled SARS-2 to infect humans from still unknown animal species have never been seen.
“It’s completely exceptional,” said Baloo Uxe. “We are always there [too] Of late
