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The Covid-mink link is back in the spotlight
Scientists debate vaccine implications as Denmark moves to euthanize entire herd
A worker transports slaughtered mink at a farm near Soroe, Denmark, after the government decided to slaughter the entire herd due to a possible Covid-19 link. (Reuters photo)
COPENHAGEN: In September, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen laughed at a journalist’s question about coronavirus infections in mink farms.
Fast-forward to November, and Frederiksen’s stance has changed radically. He has announced plans to kill Denmark’s entire mink population, which, at 17 million, outnumbers humans in the country by a factor of three.
The news has drawn the attention of health officials around the world after Frederiksen warned that certain strains of the coronavirus, which apparently jumped from mink to humans, developed mutations that could undermine the efficacy of any vaccine.
Some countries have already decided not to take chances, with Britain banning all travelers from Denmark.
Scientists reacted to the Danish news at first with much criticism, along with calls to see some supporting evidence from the Danes supporting drastic measures that will paralyze the country’s fur industry.
On Friday, officials said they had shared the complete genome sequence of at least one mink-related strain of the coronavirus. That was enough to convince some outside researchers that Frederiksen was not exaggerating.
“It would be nice if it could be confirmed first in another laboratory,” Eskild Petersen, professor of infectious diseases at Aarhus University in Denmark, said in an interview. But this is an evolving public health emergency. You have to act, and that’s what the government has done ”.
In total, the Danish authorities have detected 214 cases of people infected with a strain of the virus related to mink. That’s after scientists completely sequenced a pool of 5,000 Danish patient samples from the past few months. Authorities expect confirmed animals linked to the outbreak to increase in the coming weeks as they fully analyze more than 30,000 other samples from that period.
Five groups
The mink-related virus strains fit into five different groups, Danish authorities said. Within those groups, seven different mutations have occurred in the virus’ spike protein, the part that protrudes from the pathogen’s coat and allows it to infect healthy host cells.
That’s significant because most of the leading Covid vaccine candidates are heading for the peak of the coronavirus. The goal is to induce the body to generate protective antibodies against the spike that blocks infection.
A mink-related strain of the coronavirus has four different alterations in the beak protein genes, officials said. That virus was detected in five different mink farms in northern Denmark and in samples from 12 people, of whom only four were directly connected to a farm, authorities said. That’s reason to believe that some strains of mink-related viruses are transmitted from person to person, officials said.
The decision to kill all the minks in Denmark has been a long time coming. In June, Denmark recorded the first case of coronavirus on a farm where the animals are raised, in the northwestern region of the country. Early tests suggested that humans and animals were transmitting the virus to each other. The virus initially spread to two other farms and herds were culled on all three.
In August, the coronavirus was detected on a fourth farm. Instead of sacrificing the mink, the government changed its strategy and tried to contain the spread through isolation. However, over time, the virus spread to a total of 216 farms in the following months, Danish officials said. The government’s efforts to contain the spread had failed.
Fears of vaccines
Then on Monday, researchers at the Statens Serum Institute in Copenhagen received laboratory results that many had long feared. A mink-related coronavirus appeared to be less affected by Covid antibodies from several people who had previously been infected.
The institute told government officials on Tuesday that continued mink farming in Denmark could increase the risk of more mutations that could undermine the effectiveness of the Covid vaccines that are being developed. Experts said more studies are needed. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization has updated its guidance on the issue.
“The true implication of changes in the spike protein has not yet been evaluated by the international scientific community and is therefore unclear,” said James Wood, head of the department of veterinary medicine at the University of Cambridge. “It is too early to say that the change will cause vaccines or immunity to fail.”
Frederiksen herself hails from northwestern Denmark, where mink farms abound. His government’s decision to euthanize the entire mink population has caused outrage in the region, where, among other things, thousands of jobs are at stake.
At Wednesday’s press conference, Frederiksen spoke directly to the country’s mink farmers: “They are losing their life’s work, which in some cases has been passed down from generation to generation. The government is well aware that this is a day of mourning for those who work in this industry ”.
But the situation is “very, very serious,” he said. “Not just because of Denmark, but because of how the whole world handles the coronavirus.”
