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Crown buds have been found on nine other Swedish mink farms. All are located near the first affected farm in Sölvesborg in Blekinge. “I’m not surprised, but it’s sad,” says Jörgen Martinsson, CEO of Swedish Visón.
In Swedish mink farms, so-called fur is always carried out at the beginning of November, which means killing all animals except those that are to be kept for breeding. Therefore, Sweden does not currently follow the path chosen by Denmark, where approximately 15 million minks will be killed, including breeding animals.
– We have not seen the mutation of the virus in Sweden, which has been seen in Denmark, he says Håkan Henrikson, Chief Veterinarian of the Swedish Board of Agriculture.
It states that approximately 80 percent of the Swedish domestic mink will die relative to their fur.
The coat is exported
The Swedish authorities have no requirement that the fur of minks previously infected by the crown be destroyed.
– It’s probably a short time after the virus can survive on the surface of the fur, so I’d say after a week or so there’s nothing left, says Håkan Henrikson.
In the Netherlands and Denmark, mink farms were affected by crown buds much earlier and development in these countries has led to increased vigilance in Sweden. All suicidal animals have been sent for analysis to the Swedish Veterinary Institute. This is how the first Swedish case was discovered in October.
– We shipped a lot of corpses at the beginning of the week and they are the ones that have now been analyzed and show a much more widespread spread of infection than before, says Jörgen Martinsson, CEO of Swedish Visón.
In some of the nine farms, human-to-human infection has also been detected, but not all, according to Martinsson.
Size of a risk factor
In Denmark, it has been previously established that the biggest risk factors for a mink farm to be affected are the size of the farm and its proximity to other infected farms.
But it is not yet clear how the infection spreads between mink farms. One hypothesis is that wild animals, such as seagulls, can carry it with them. Recently, it turned out that a gull in Denmark had a virus on its exterior, without being infected, and gulls often prowl farms, especially when feeding minks.
Sweden now has up to ten infected farms, while Denmark has 207. The biggest difference between Swedish and Danish mines is size. While Sweden has around 40 mink farms, Denmark is the world’s largest exporter with around 1,100 farmers.
– What affects is the enormous animal density you have in certain areas, says Håkan Henrikson.
In the Netherlands, the first cases of corona infection in mink farming were discovered in April. There were previous decisions that the entire mining industry would be phased out until 2024, but due to the spread of the crown this has been pushed forward to 2021.
The first crown drop on a Danish mink farm was discovered in June this year. Since then, the infection has increased considerably and is now found in 207 of the country’s 1,138 mink farms. On November 4, a decision was made to kill all minks, including breeding animals, after a coronavirus mutation began to spread between minks and humans in Jutland.
In Sweden, the first case was discovered on a mink farm on October 23 and the infection has now been found on nine other farms. They are all located in Blekinge.
The experience of the Netherlands and Denmark shows that the most common is that minks are first infected by humans. The importance of wild animals for the spread of infection to mink is being investigated.
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