(CNN)An Oregon mink farm has reported an outbreak of coronavirus among mink and farmworkers.Ten mink samples submitted all came back positive for coronavirus, the Oregon Department of Agriculture (ODA) said in a news release on Friday. The farm has been placed under quarantine, meaning “no animal or animal product can leave the farm until further notice,” according to ODA.
10,000 mink are dead in Covid-19 outbreaks at US fur farms after virus believed spread by humansThe farmer and his staff have been advised to self-isolate after multiple coronavirus cases were reported among workers on the farm, the release said.”We have been engaged with the Oregon mink industry for some time, providing information on biosecurity to prevent the introduction of SARS-CoV-2 and were ready to respond,” ODA veterinarian Dr. Ryan Scholz said.Content by Voltaren Arthritis Pain GelChasing the Joy of MovementThis is how world champion cyclist Kristin Armstrong manages her osteoarthritis in a life of constant movement.Content by Voltaren Arthritis Pain GelChasing the Joy of MovementThis is how world champion cyclist Kristin Armstrong manages her osteoarthritis in a life of constant movement.”The farmer did the right thing by self-reporting symptoms very early and he is now cooperating with us and Oregon Health Authority (OHA) in taking care of his animals and staff. So far, we have no reports of mink mortalities linked to the virus but that could change as the virus progresses.”A public health veterinarian team is working with those affected by the outbreak by ensuring staff have personal protective equipment and the supplies needed to follow coronavirus guidance, according to OHA.close dialog
Want tips for navigating the changing workplace?We’ve got you.SIGN ME UPBy subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.“Worker safety is critical to protect people and animals on mink farms,” said OHA public health veterinarian Dr. Emilio DeBess. “Our best weapon against the virus right now is education. We are providing testing, specific workplace guidance and support, and supplying additional PPE to the farmer, the employees and their families to help reduce further spread of the virus.”
Coronavirus could drive the last nail into the mink fur tradeThis year, the virus was detected in mink in seven countries, including the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, Sweden, and Spain, and three US states, Utah, Michigan, and Wisconsin, according to ODA.Thousands of mink have died at fur farms in Utah and Wisconsin after a series of coronavirus outbreaks. In Utah, ranchers have lost at least 8,000 mink to Covid-19.There is currently no evidence that animals, including mink, play a significant role in transmitting the virus to humans, according to the CDC and the US Department of Agriculture. The risk of animals spreading Covid-19 to humans is considered low.The USDA announces confirmed coronavirus cases in animals each time it is found in a new species. All confirmed cases in animals are posted on the department’s website.
Scientists fear fur farm animals in wild could create ‘lasting’ Covid reservoir that could then spread back to humans
Dead mink are disposed of on army land near Holstebro, Denmark. About 10 million mink have been culled in the country this month. Photograph: Morten Stricker/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP/GettyAnimals farmed is supported by
Escaped mink carrying the virus that causes Covid-19 could potentially infect Denmark’s wild animals, raising fears of a permanent Sars-CoV-2 reservoir from which new virus variants could be reintroduced to humans.
Denmark, the world’s largest exporter of mink fur, announced in early November that it would cull the country’s farmed mink after discovering a mutated version of the virus that could have jeopardised the efficacy of future vaccines.
Around 10 million mink have been killed to date. Fur industry sources expect the fur from the remaining 5 million to 7 million mink will be sold.
A number of Covid mink variants were identified by Denmark’s state-owned research body the Statens Serum Institut, but only one, known as C5, raised vaccine efficacy concerns. However, Denmark’s health ministry said last week that the C5 mink variant was “very likely extinct”.Advertisement
Mink are known to regularly escape fur farms and the risk that infected mink are now in the wild was confirmed on Thursday.
“Every year, a few thousand mink escape. We know that because they are an invasive species and every year hunters and trappers kill a few thousand wild mink. The population of escaped mink is quite stable,” said Sten Mortensen, veterinary research manager at the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration.
This year, Mortensen said, there was a risk that about 5% of the minks that escaped from farms were infected with Covid-19.
The risk of the escapees infecting other animals was low, he said, because mink were “very solitary creatures”. But, if they did, the animals most likely to catch the virus would include wild animals such as ferrets and raccoon dogs and “susceptible domestic animals” such as cats.
Mink do not normally die from Covid-19, he added. “Once a mink has had Covid it usually recovers well. Some might have a few days of respiratory difficulty, but most recover and develop immunity.”
The risk of Sars-CoV-2 moving into wild populations has drawn concern from other scientists. Prof Joanne Santini, a microbiologist at University College London, said that, once in the wild, “it will become extremely difficult to control its further spread to animals and then back to humans”.
Transmission to the wild meant “the virus could broaden its host-range [and] infect other species of animals that it wouldn’t ordinarily be able to infect”, Santini said.
Prof Marion Koopmans, head of viroscience at Rotterdam’s Erasmus University, in an email to the Guardian, said: “Sars-CoV-2 could potentially continue to circulate in large-scale farms or be introduced to escaped and wild mustelids [weasels, badgers, otters, ferrets, martens, minks, and wolverines] or other wildlife” and then “in theory, as avian flu and swine influenza viruses do, continue to evolve in their animal hosts, constituting a permanent pandemic threat to humans and animals.”
However, a mink vaccine is a contentious issue for animal welfare organisations. “Instead of dealing with the fact that the appalling conditions of high-volume, low-welfare fur farming make mink so vulnerable to disease in the first place, it’s easier to distract everyone with talk of a vaccine that could be used like a yearly sticking plaster to compensate for the consequences of those poor welfare conditions,” said Wendy Higgins of Humane Society International.
(CNN)As the coronavirus surges unchecked across the United States, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday urged Americans not to travel for Thanksgiving, and to celebrate only with members of their own households.”What is at stake is the increased chance of one of your loved ones becoming sick and then being hospitalized and dying around the holidays,” said Henry Walke, the CDC’s Covid-19 incident manager.The appeal, issued at the first CDC press conference in months, came on the same day that the nation reported more than 185,000 new coronavirus cases and 2,000 deaths in 24 hours — yet another grim record. More than a quarter-million Americans have died of Covid-19, exceeding public health officials’ worst predictions. Now, experts are forecasting 471,000 Americans will die from the virus by March.Still, many are planning to celebrate with friends and family this Thanksgiving — one of the most heavily traveled weeks of the year — as shown by the hours-long lines at Covid-19 testing centers in some cities. But even for those that can get tested, experts warn a negative result doesn’t guarantee you’ll be Covid-free by the time relatives, old and young, gather around the table for the turkey to be carved.Content by AmazonSmall town company’s big time growth through AmazonSince 2010 Amazon has invested over $270 billion in the US, including infrastructure and compensation to our employees – $72 billion in 2018 alone.As the US tries to make it through a coronavirus Thanksgiving unscathed, Europe is already worried about Christmas.Europe’s leaders have forced hundreds of millions of people back into lockdown to combat a second wave of the virus, in the hopes that the crisis will improve by the holidays. Someone in Europe died from Covid-19 every 17 seconds over the past week, WHO Europe’s Regional Director Hans Kluge said Thursday. But there are some positive signs that tier-based systems of restrictions are beginning to work: Cases dropped by 10% across the continent last week.close dialog
Do you want the news summarized each morning?We’ve got you.Sign Me UpBy subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.“It’s a small signal, but it’s a signal nevertheless,” Kluge said.
YOU ASKED. WE ANSWERED
Q: Is it still safe to go to the gym?A:It seems to be at one Virginia gym. Velvet Minnick, the owner and head coach of 460 Fitness, thought she had a nightmare scenario on her hands when she learned that 50 athletes were potentially exposed to Covid-19 by one of the gym’s coaches. But not a single member ended up contracting the virus, thanks to the extra safety precautions and ventilation measures she put in place.When Virginia entered Phase 2 of reopening in June and gyms were allowed to reopen, Minnick consulted one of her members — a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech — for help making the facility safe. Lindsey Marr, who joined 460 Fitness about two years ago, has an expertise in airborne transmission of viruses, air quality and nanotechnology.Among the measures she put in place: Opening bay doors around the facility, workout stations spaced 10 feet apart, no sharing equipment, no traveling around the gym, and a carbon dioxide monitor to track indoor levels — a good indicator of whether viruses are building up in the air.Send your questions here. Are you a health care worker fighting Covid-19? Message us on WhatsApp about the challenges you’re facing: +1 347-322-0415.
WHAT’S IMPORTANT TODAY
Europe averted a Covid collapse — here’s what the US could learnCovid-19 is spreading faster than ever in the US, with hospitals in some states running at capacity. America is now in the same situation that France, Belgium and the Czech Republic were last month, when rapidly rising infections put their health care systems weeks away from collapse.For now, these countries have managed to avoid the worst-case scenario, in which people die because hospitals are full and they can’t access the care they need. They slowed down the epidemics by imposing lockdowns — a strategy that the US could learn from. The problem: Many governments are still making decisions based on politics, not science, Ivana Kottasová writes.”By no means what we have done in Europe is perfect, these governments are probably reacting a little bit slowly, but they are at least reacting, they are doing what they can to make sure that health services are not overwhelmed … and I think this is clearly what’s needed in the US,” said one expert and UK government scientific adviser.First White House Covid briefing in months presents two divergent realitiesStanding in front of a map of the US awash in red, the White House coronavirus response coordinator appeared with other top health officials for the first time in months on Thursday. Dr. Deborah Birx delivered a grim assessment of the rapidly worsening pandemic — spurred in part by a cold snap in the country’s heartland — and urged Americans to “increase their vigilance” as they eagerly await a vaccine.Dr. Birx, once a senior member of the task force, said she’s been traveling the country trying to encourage governors and other state and local leaders to enact measures that will stop the spread of the virus, repeatedly urging people to wear masks — and wearing one herself throughout the briefing. But she’s had mixed results at best — including getting through to the Trump administration itself.Striking a dramatically different tone, Vice President Mike Pence offered a far rosier assessment of the pandemic in America, saying the US “has never been more prepared” to take on the virus, as he spoke out against the need for nationwide lockdowns and school closures.Dr. Birx speaks at a coronavirus task force briefing at the White House on Thursday.WHO says remdesivir should not be used on hospitalized Covid patientsThe WHO has advised against using the antiviral drug remdesivir to treat hospitalized patients, no matter how severe their illness may be. According to the update, published in the medical journal the BMJ, current evidence does not suggest remdesivir affects the risk of dying from Covid-19 or needing mechanical ventilation, among other important outcomes.WHO’s new update comes about a month after Gilead Sciences, the maker of remdesivir, announced that the US Food and Drug Administration approved the drug for the treatment of coronavirus infection. Remdesivir became the first coronavirus treatment to receive FDA approval. On Thursday, FDA gave emergency use authorization to a combination of remdesivir and the rheumatoid arthritis drug baricitinib to treat suspected or confirmed cases of Covid-19.Remdesivir may have received FDA approval but not WHO’s recommendation because of emerging research, said Dr. Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, who was not involved in the WHO guidance. Studies initially showed some benefit against Covid-19, but as more data accumulates, that appears to be changing.
ON OUR RADAR
US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is pulling the plug on funding for emergency Federal Reserve, as the pandemic continues to rage across America.
Supervisors at a Tyson meat plant in Iowa took bets on how many workers would get infected with Covid-19, even as they denied knowledge of the spread of the virus, according to new allegations in a lawsuit against the company and some employees.
Mexico has surpassed 100,000 Covid-19 deaths — making it the fourth country to hit the grim milestone, after the US, Brazil and India.
South Australia will lift its six-day lockdown on Saturday — a few days before originally planned — after health authorities found that a person lied to contact-tracing officials.
Japan has recorded yet another daily high of Covid-19 cases, but the government says no state of emergency is needed.
TOP TIPS
Public health experts have made it abundantly clear that you should not travel for Thanksgiving, or celebrate with people outside of your immediate household. But still, it’s tough to thwart tradition — especially when it means saying “no” to your family.If you opt to bail on Thanksgiving plans this year, etiquette experts say it’s a good idea to express your choice as a personal one. Here are some more tips on declining invitations in the name of Covid, and how you might consider giving thanks a bit differently this year.
TODAY’S PODCAST
“You’re one handshake away from heaven with this virus.” — Reverend David Sealy’s doctorReverend Sealy’s congregation needs him for many things — socially distant services, phone calls, and funerals for those who’ve died from Covid-19. The problem is, he’s at high risk himself. CNN Senior Writer Thomas La
Denmark was forced to mass-cull its farmed mink population after mutated strains of Covid-19 had transferred to humans. Will this be the moment fashion cuts ties with fur for good?
Last week, Denmark announced it would be undertaking a mass cull of the country’s farmed mink population after mutated strains of Covid-19 had transferred to humans, infecting at least 12 people. The international concern is that the mutation could jeopardise the effectiveness of any potential vaccines, including the formulation announced this week by Pfizer.
Denmark is the world’s most prolific producer of mink pelts: with between 15 and 17 million of the animals housed in more than 1,000 mink farms when the cull was announced (meaning the mink population is at least treble that of Denmark’s human one). The mink are bred purely for their fur, much of which ends up being made into clothing, as well as furniture and soft furnishings. Although latest reports indicate that the cull has been scaled back to infected areas in face of growing opposition and questions over the government’s legal advice, this could prove to be a crucial turning point for the global fur trade.
The scale of the cull –– indicative of the appetite among brands and consumers for fur –– is perhaps surprising, given that the fashion industry’s taste for fur is seemingly on the wane. Over the past few years a roster of high profile brands including Prada, Burberry, Gucci, Chanel, Versace, Armani, and DKNY have all pledged to stop using fur altogether: some ceasing use of all pelts including mink, chinchilla, and rabbit, with others going even further and halting production of anything made of exotic animal skins and angora, too.
This anti-fur stance has been gaining traction among retailers as well. The Yoox Net-a-Porter group stopped selling fur in 2017, while last year Farfetch and Macy’s declared their intentions to do the same. As for the catwalk, in 2018 the British Fashion Council vowed that London Fashion Week’s catwalks would no longer feature fur, and the British government is now considering banning all sales of fur after Brexit (fur farming itself was made illegal in the UK in 2000). The manufacture and sale of new fur products is also banned in California and even the Queen has got in on the act, making a switch to faux fur last year (according to Lyst, Buckingham Palace’s announcement on the matter in November 2019 led to a 52 per cent increase in viewing of faux fur products.)
These kinds of industry pledges are increasingly welcome as the public perception of fur continues to sour. No longer the marker of luxury it was, fur is now often seen as a retrograde product mired in unjustifiable ethical issues. The rise of innovative fur alternatives has also helped. While Shrimps, Maison Atia, and Stand Studio renew the desirable status of faux fur on a season-by-season basis, Stella McCartney is continuing to pioneer sustainable alternatives via its Koba Fur Free Fur (made from a mix of plant products and recycled polyester) which is engineered to look and feel like fur, minus the animal cruelty.
So, will this mink cull force the fashion industry to finally kill off its fur trade? It’s hard to tell. Most of Denmark’s mink pelts are exported to China, where demand remains strong. But the fur industry has undoubtedly taken a downward turn in recent years. Although the British Fur Trade Association and auction houses such as Saga Furs claim that younger consumers are increasingly turning to fur, overall sales seem to be dropping. Between 2015 and 2018, global fur sales fell from $40 billion to $33 billion, while mink prices have apparently declined from €59 a pelt in 2013 to just €19 in September 2020.
As the pandemic continues to put strain on an already ailing industry, perhaps it also provides a useful moment to pause and once more question the validity of fur’s presence in the fashion industry at all. This could be the time to say goodbye to it — for good.
Wed 18 Nov 2020 12.31 ESTLast modified on Wed 18 Nov 2020 14.58 EST
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Danish farmers have until midnight on Thursday 19 November to cull all mink in the country. Photograph: Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP/Getty
Seven countries are now reporting mink-related Sars-CoV-2 mutations in humans, according to new scientific analysis.
The mutations are identified as Covid-19 mink variants as they have repeatedly been found in mink and now in humans as well.
Uncertainty around the implications of the discovery of a Covid-19 mink variant in humans led Denmark, the world’s largest mink fur producer, to launch a nationwide cull earlier this month.
The cull was sparked by research from Denmark’s public health body, the Statens Serum Institut (SSI), which showed that a mink variant called C5 was harder for antibodies to neutralise and posed a potential threat to vaccine efficacy.Advertisement
Denmark, the Netherlands, South Africa, Switzerland, the Faroe Islands, Russia and the US have all reported cases of mink-related mutations.
Despite a political backlash the cull has continued, and farmers have until midnight on Thursday to cull all mink in the country. However, the row over the cull has forced the resignation of the Danish agriculture minister, Mogens Jensen.
SSI director Kåre Mølbak has also said he would resign. It was the SSI’s findings on reduced antibody efficacy that led to the cull order. Mølbak told local media he is retiring because he is 65 and denied it was related to the mink cull.
Until now there had been no widespread reports of mink variants in humans outside Denmark. But scientists uploading virus sequencing and variant information to Gisaid, a global database initiative, said there have been signs of the mink variants around the world.
“We knew there were these mink variants in seven countries, but we only had about 20 genomes of each, which is very few. Then last week the Danes uploaded 6,000 genome sequences and with those we were able to identify 300 or more of the mink variant Y453F in viruses having infected humans in Denmark,” said University College London (UCL) Genetics Institute director Francois Balloux.
Asked about the implications of the findings, Balloux said it was an indication of the need to cull farmed mink. “A bigger host reservoir means more infections in humans. The main point here, I think, is that although the mutation might not be scary, there is still very good reason to get rid of the mink reservoir. We just don’t need it.” In Denmark, he added, they have a lot of mink, “over three times more than humans”.
The prevalence of Danish mink-related mutations is evident in the Gisaid database. “Denmark has 329 F-variant sequences, which roughly maps to as many individuals, although there may be some duplicates,” said Prof Seshadri Vasan from the University of York, who analysed the database for the mink variants. “The Netherlands has six. South Africa and Switzerland have two each, while the Faroe Islands, Russia and Utah [US] have one each.”
Asked how the spread might have happened, Vasan said that given some of the human and mink F-variants were from samples collected in Denmark in June, it might be that “movement of people, animals or goods could have spread the F-variant to other countries”.
But, because the Gisaid database includes only patchy patient information and no travel history – and as some of the samples lack collection dates – he said it is impossible to say exactly how and when the spread took place, although local scientists might be better placed to understand.
Last month, Vasan and his team published a global template aimed at improving the collection and sharing of de-identified patient information in a bid to improve data quality.
Viruses are known to mutate, but variants alone are not necessarily a problem. Most importantly, said Prof Joanne Santini, a microbiologist at UCL, we still don’t know whether this mutation happened in mink or humans first.
In a joint email this week to the Guardian, Santini and UCL colleague Prof Sarah Edwards, a bioethicist, said the Sars-CoV-2 Y453F variant in the spike protein is “unlikely to pose any serious risk to the expected efficacy of current candidate vaccines, or itself pose a new public health threat” on its own.
If, however, the variant originated in mink and spread to humans, “then we would have to doubt our ability to manage outbreaks in otherwise seemingly contained farm animals once detected”.
Constant mutations could be a source of concern too. The email added that “multiple additional variants in the spike protein could indeed have concerning implications for how infectious the virus is to humans and also to animals”, potentially posing “new threats to the expected efficacy of our candidate vaccines”.
“The early observations by CSIRO [Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation] scientists demonstrate the possible implications for the wider spread of Sars-CoV-2 variants between humans and animals,” she said.
Although Denmark is the only country to order a nationwide mink cull, others, including the Netherlands, Spain and, most recently, Greece, are killing mink with Covid-19. On Tuesday, Reuters reported mandatory mink testing had started in Poland, despite industry fears that tests could lead to a nationwide cull.
On the business side, the Danish cull has had immediate effects. Last week, Denmark’s breeder association and world’s largest fur auction house, Kopenhagen Fur, announced a “controlled shutdown” over the next three years, while Danish thinktank estimates put the cost of mink farm closures at about DKK3bn (£360m).
Minks are transmitting Covid-19 to humans. Don’t blame the minks.
From Denmark to the US, outbreaks on mink farms raise concerns that a virus mutation could make our vaccines ineffective.By Sigal Samuel Nov 13, 2020, 11:20am EST
When minks are bred for their pelts — which are used to make fur coats and accessories — they are confined in small cages for their entire lives. They cannot engage in natural behaviors like roaming territories, digging, or swimming.
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Denmark’s fur farms are home to 17 million minks, and last week, the government announced it would kill all of them.
This week, however, the government rolled that back a bit. Now, the government merely recommends killing all farmed minks in the country. It will only requirethe killing of minks —weasel-like animals prized for their fur —on farms where Covid-19 has been detected.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen initially said all 17 million minks would be culled because the virus that causes Covid-19 had moved from humans to minks and back to humans. The country’s public health officials reported that while in the mink, the virus had mutated, raising the risk of a new strain circulating among us that our vaccines would be ineffective against — a finding that, to be clear, is preliminary and has not been confirmed in peer-reviewed research. In a worst-case scenario, that could set back the clock on our pandemic recovery.
This fear isn’t limited to Denmark. There have also been Covid-19 outbreaks on mink fur farms in the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Italy — and the US. At least a million minks have already been culled by gassing in the Netherlands and Spain, though the US has so far avoided culling. On farms in Utah, Wisconsin,and Michigan, thousands of minks have died of the disease, but mink-to-human transmission has not yet been detected.
The threat to public healthseems to raise an ethical dilemma: Should farms kill all their minks in order to prevent a mutated form of the virus from spreading among all human beings? Is causing that much animal suffering justifiable if it prevents a lot of human suffering, which could result if our future vaccines are ineffective against the new strain?
Denmark, at first, thought the answer was yes. But it was forced to backtrack after experts pointed out that the government couldn’t legally mandate a mass cull without passing new legislation, and after infectious disease experts questioned the scientific basis for the cull.
If it turns out to be true that the mink variant would jeopardize our vaccines and that there’s a strong chance that thousands or evenmillions of people will therefore die if we don’t cull the minks, you could make the case that a cull is the lesser of two evils. But we just don’t have enough data right now to know whether that’s true.
We do, however, know one thing with certainty. The fact that we are being forced to choose between two reasonable impulses — wanting to prevent animal suffering and wanting to prevent human suffering — is the result of another decision made: to farm thousands and thousands of animals in close quarters and unsanitary conditions.
Large-scale animal farming amplifies the threat of pandemics
Mink fur farms have a reputation for cruelty. The animals spend their entire lives confined in small cages, where they grow so distressed that they sometimes resort to self-mutilation and even cannibalism.
In both environments, animals live in cages under harsh conditions that compromise their immune systems. They’re tightly crowded together, often coming into contact with each other’s secretions and excrement. To make matters worse, selection for specific genes makes the animals almost genetically identical. That means that a virus can easily spread from animal to animal without encountering any genetic variants that might stop it in its tracks. As it rips through a herd, the virus can mutate and grow more virulent.
That’s why Michael Greger, an expert on zoonotic viruses, previously told me, “If you actually want to create global pandemics, then build factory farms.”
Both with fur farms (which contain thousands of animals) and with larger factory farms (which contain tens or hundreds of thousands of animals), we have created perfect-storm environments for the emergence and spread of disease. As the Humane Society Veterinary Medical Association recently wrote, “Fur farms often lack naturally mitigating factors — such as abundant sunlight, genetic variability, and healthy distance between animals. For these reasons, fur farms provide potential channels for diseases to propagate.”
The sheer number of animals we keep on these farms makes it likely for disease to spread. It’s also what makes it hard for us to think of a way to stamp out the problem other than by killing all the animals.
Jeff Sebo, a professor of environmental studies, bioethics, and philosophy at New York University, said the moral of the story is obvious: “As a general rule, if you have so many animals in your care that you are unable to care for them during crises, then that is too many, and you should not be allowed to own or keep that many animals in the first place.”
Culling animals en masse is not as rare as we might like to think. This spring, millions of animals were euthanized on American factory farms because there were no meat plants to send them to for slaughter; many plants had been shuttered after workers contracted Covid-19. And right now, hundreds of birds in the UK are being culled because an outbreak of the H5N2 avian influenza has been detected.
The way we’ve designed our animal farming system forces us to make tragic choices. “It basically makes us have to get into some contorted ethical reasoning,” Sebo said.
The mink situation has forced even some animal advocates to support a cull, for fear that leaving minks alive with untreated Covid-19 will cause them severe respiratory distress. “If mink on a farm are infected, suffering respiratory problems, and are not being culled, their welfare will also be seriously compromised,” said Joanna Swabe, a policy adviser for Humane Society International. Animal Protection Denmark CEO Britta Riis likewise said it was a “necessary decision” to cull, expressing concern about the welfare of the minks before they die.
And of course there are the potential public health risks for humans, which require more research but are not farfetched. The bottom line:“We have placed ourselves in this situation where we’re forced to make a choice that we never should have had to make,” Sebo said.
If we decide to keep raising thousands of animals on high-density farms, it’s clear we will keep finding ourselves in terrible and unnecessary moral binds where we have to choose between animal welfare and human welfare. We need to ask ourselves whether the benefit — a fur coat, a cheap cut of meat — is really worth the cost.
Sign up for the Future Perfect newsletter. Twice a week, you’ll get a roundup of ideas and solutions for tackling our biggest challenges: improving public health, decreasing human and animal suffering, easing catastrophic risks, and — to put it simply — getting better at doing good.
For now, farmers across Denmark have halted the mass slaughter of mink, and are only putting down animals that are infected. Photographer: Ole Jensen/Getty Images
Mink farms pose a serious threat to human health in the age of Covid, and will continue to do so even if individual mink mutations of the virus are fought back, according to Kare Molbak, Denmark’s top epidemiologist.
Denmark had planned to cull its entire population of mink — 17 million animals — after discovering a new strain of Covid-19 that has the potential to derail global efforts to develop a vaccine. The so-called cluster 5 variant carried in Danish mink led to mutations in the virus pod’s spike protein, which most vaccines target.
But this week, the planned cull was shelved after political infighting forced Denmark’s minority government to acknowledge it didn’t have parliament’s support to move ahead. There are even questions as to the legality of its order to exterminate the country’s mink population.
With political agendas dominating the day, the concern now is that the scientific arguments will get drowned out. Molbak, in his interview with Politiken, voiced his concern over the focus of lawmakers, which he suggested is misplaced.
“I think that the issue of cluster 5 has received far too much attention,” he said. Even if the cluster 5 mutation dies out, “there’d be new variants in mink that would spawn equivalent or bigger problems, a cluster 6, 7 or 8.”
“Our biggest concern since June has been the large reservoir that the mink provide the virus,” he said. “It’s a perfect storm. You have an animal that’s particularly receptive toward the virus and that, at the same time, is kept in large numbers, as is the case in Denmark.”
“Mink are very easily infected by the coronavirus, and once it’s there, it spreads at the speed of light,” he said. “We’ve seen how that then spreads to humans. That makes it practically impossible to handle the spread during a pandemic.”
1 of 5FILE – In this Friday, Oct. 9, 2020 file photo, minks in a farm in Gjoel in North Jutland, Denmark. Denmark’s prime minister says the government wants to cull all minks in Danish farms, to minimize the risk of them re-transmitting the new coronavirus to humans. She said Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2020, a report from a government agency that maps the coronavirus in Denmark has shown a mutation in the virus found in 12 people in the northern part of the country who got infected by minks. (Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau Scanpix via AP, File)
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — More than a quarter million Danes went into lockdown Friday in a northern region of the country where a mutated variation of the coronavirus has infected minks being farmed for their fur, leading to an order to kill millions of the animals.
Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said the move was meant to contain the virus, and it came two days after the government ordered the cull of all 15 million minks bred at Denmark’s 1,139 mink farms.
The coronavirus evolves constantly and, to date, there is no evidence that any of the mutations pose an increased danger to people. But Danish authorities were not taking any chances.
“Instead of waiting for evidence, it is better to act quickly,” said Tyra Grove Krause, head department at Statens Serum Institut, a government agency that maps the spread of the coronavirus in Denmark.
In seven northern Danish municipalities with some 280,000 residents sport and cultural activities have been suspended, public transportation has been stopped and regional borders have been closed. Only people with so-called “critical functions” such as police and health officials and different authorities are being permitted to cross municipal boundaries.ADVERTISEMENThttps://598824f24255f8188d3ac7c9665c3618.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html
People in the region have been urged to to be tested. As of Saturday, restaurants must close and school students from fifth grade and up will switch to remote learning Monday.
“We must knock down completely this virus variant,” Health Minister Magnus Heunicke said Thursday, adding that the mutated virus had been found in 12 people.
Last month, Denmark started culling millions of minks in the north of the country after COVID-19 infections were reported among the stock there. Nationwide, at least 216 out of the 1,139 fur farms in Denmark have now been infected.
Kaare Moelbak of Statens Serum Institut said the virus variant was registered in August and September, and no mutations have been found since, so it was not known if it still exists. The mutated virus was found in five mink farms, according to the government body.
WHO officials said each case needs to be evaluated to determine if any of the changes mean the virus behaves differently.
“We are a long, long way from making any determination of that kind,” said Mike Ryan, the WHO emergencies chief. He said that such mutations happen all the time in viruses.
“Right now the evidence that we have doesn’t suggest that this variant is in any way different in the way it behaves,” he said in Geneva.
Peter Ben Embarek, a WHO expert on food safety, said that initial studies on pigs, chickens and cattle “show that these species are not at all susceptible in the same way that mink are, for example. So even if these animals were infected, they would not be able to sustain and spread the disease in the same way.”
Britain on Friday said that people coming from Denmark must self-isolate for 14 days, adding the country to a list of countries it deems risky.
The Danish government said a mutation of the virus had been found in 12 people infected by minks, which farmers have been ordered to cull en masse, but experts said the significance of any variant strain and its effect on humans was unclear because it was yet to be studied.
Denmark, the world’s largest mink fur exporter, produces an estimated 17 million furs per year. Kopenhagen Fur, a cooperative of 1,500 Danish breeders, accounts for 40% of the global mink production. Most of its exports go to China and Hong Kong.
The pelts of the mink will be destroyed and Danish fur farmers have said the cull, which is estimated to cost up to 5 billion kroner ($785 million), may spell the end of the industry in the country.
Overall, Denmark has reported 53,180 cases of coronavirus and 738 deaths.
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Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.
The Evergreen State on Tuesday recorded an additional 1,469 cases of the novel virus, a record, according to data from the Washington State Department of Health. In total, the state has reported some 111,480 cases of COVID-19 to date.
Washington state this week reported a record number of daily new coronavirus cases, according to official estimates. (iStock)
Also as of Tuesday, an estimated 16 additional deaths were recorded, bringing the number of lives lost to the novel virus in the state to 2,416.
The last record for daily new cases of the coronavirus was set on Oct. 30, when 1,047 new COVID-19 cases were reported in a single day, according to a news release from the health department at the time. Prior to that, the last daily record was set in mid-July, officials said.
The majority of cases have been reported among the 20-39 age group (40%), while the 40-59 age group follows behind at 28%, per state health data.
The news comes as the U.S. recorded 100,000 new cases of COVID-19 in a single day for the first time, surpassing a record set at the end of October when some 99,000 daily new cases were reported.
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – Denmark will cull its mink population of up to 17 million after a mutation of the coronavirus found in the animals spread to humans, the prime minister said on Wednesday.Slideshow ( 2 images )
Health authorities found virus strains in humans and in mink which showed decreased sensitivity against antibodies, potentially lowering the efficacy of future vaccines, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said.
“We have a great responsibility towards our own population, but with the mutation that has now been found, we have an even greater responsibility for the rest of the world as well,” Frederiksen told a news conference.
The findings, which have been shared with the World Health Organization and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, were based on laboratory tests by the State Serum Institute, the Danish authority dealing with infectious diseases.
The head of the WHO’s emergencies programme, Mike Ryan, called on Friday for full-scale scientific investigations of the complex issue of humans – outside China – infecting mink which in turn transmitted the virus back to humans.
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“We have been informed by Denmark of a number of persons infected with coronavirus from mink, with some genetic changes in the virus,” WHO said in a statement emailed to Reuters in Geneva. “The Danish authorities are investigating the epidemiological and virological significance of these findings.”
Authorities in Denmark said five cases of the new virus strain had been recorded on mink farms and 12 cases in humans, and that there were between 15 million and 17 million mink in the country.
Outbreaks at mink farms have persisted in the Nordic country, the world’s largest producer of mink furs, despite repeated efforts to cull infected animals since June.
Denmark’s police, army and home guard will be deployed to speed up the culling process, Frederiksen said.
Christian Sonne, professor of Veterinary and Wildlife Medicine at Aarhus University, said in an email he believed culling the herd now as a precautionary measure was a sound decision and could prevent a future outbreak that would be more difficult to control. Sonne co-authored a letter published in the journal Science last week calling for the cull.
“China, Denmark, and Poland should support and extend the immediate and complete ban of mink production,” Sonne and his co-authors wrote last week.
Tougher lockdown restrictions and intensified tracing efforts will be implemented to contain the virus in some areas of Northern Denmark, home to a large number of mink farms, authorities said.
“The worst case scenario is a new pandemic, starting all over again out of Denmark,” said Kare Molbak, director at the State Serum Institute.
Minks have also been culled in the Netherlands and Spain after infections were discovered.
Reporting by Nikolaj Skydsgaard and Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen; additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva and Michael Erman in Maplewood, N.J. Editing by Jon Boyle, Nick Macfie, Timothy Heritage and Tom Brown
Dr. Birx speaks at a coronavirus task force briefing at the White House on Thursday.WHO says remdesivir should not be used on hospitalized Covid patientsThe 
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Exposing the Big Game 