Denmark, the world’s biggest producer of mink fur, said it would cull all of the country’s minks after a mutated version of the new coronavirus was detected at mink farms and had spread to people.
The mutation “could pose a risk that future (coronavirus) vaccines won’t work the way they should,” Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told a press conference.
“It is necessary to cull all the minks.”
Denmark’s police chief Thorkild Fogde said they would start the culling as “soon as possible,” but conceded that with 15 million to 17 million minks spread over 1,080 farms it was “a very large undertaking.”
The World Health Organization said the novel coronavirus spreads primarily through human-to-human transmission, but that “there is evidence of transmission at the human-animal interface.”
Several animals – including dogs and cats – have tested positive for the virus and there have been reported cases at mink farms in the Netherlands and Spain, as well as in Denmark.
“In a few instances, the minks that were infected by humans have transmitted the virus to other people. These are the first reported cases of animal-to-human transmission,” the WHO said in a statement sent to AFP.
The novel coronavirus has been detected at 207 Danish mink farms, including some cases with a mutated version that has been confirmed to spread back to humans.
Second lockdown
England’s 56 million people joined much of western Europe in a second coronavirus lockdown Thursday, as the United States set a fresh daily record with close to 100,000 new infections.
European governments are struggling to contain a fresh wave of the pandemic, which has now infected more than 11 million across the continent.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced an England-wide shutdown as daily death tolls hit their worst levels since May and with warnings that hospitals could soon be overwhelmed.
The new restrictions run until December 2 and mandate a return to working from home where possible, along with the closure of all non-essential shops and services. Schools will stay open.
Britain is among the world’s hardest-hit countries with just over a million virus cases and nearly 48,000 deaths.
Fresh travel bans
China has imposed fresh travel bans on non-Chinese arrivals from Britain and Belgium, as it guards against a resurgence of the coronavirus by refusing entry to people from two of Europe’s worst-hit nations.
COVID-19 first emerged in central China late last year, but Beijing has largely brought its own outbreak under control through tight travel restrictions and stringent health measures for anyone entering the country.
In March, as the virus ripped across the world, China shut its borders to all foreign nationals.
It gradually eased those restrictions to allow those stranded overseas to return with special permission from its embassies, negative COVID-19 tests and a two-week quarantine on arrival.
But in a sharp reversal as the outbreak once more billows out across Europe, the Chinese embassy in the UK said Beijing had “decided to temporarily suspend entry into China by non-Chinese nationals.”
“The suspension is a temporary response necessitated by the current situation of COVID-19,” it said.
The Chinese embassy website in Belgium announced a similar ban on travelers as a “last resort in response to the current pandemic.”