Mary Wilson
Well-known member
By PIEN HUANG • 4 HOURS AGO
... It's part of an emerging pattern of animals getting infected with the novel coronavirus with a new concern: The minks are thought to have passed the disease back to humans. Since the discovery, more than 500,000 minks have been culled on fur farms in the Netherlands over worries that their mink populations could spread the virus among humans.
The minks were first exposed to the coronavirus by infected farm workers, according to Wim van der Poel, a veterinarian who studies viruses at Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands. Then the virus spread among the animals in the farms like wildfire.
... The findings from the mink farm adds an concerning layer to our understanding of how the virus spreads because infected minks are thought to have passed the virus back to people, according to Dutch government reports. At least two farm workers are believed to have caught the novel coronavirus from handling the minks or breathing virus-contaminated clouds of dust.
The situation confirms a longstanding concern among researchers which has, until now, been hypothetical: In some animal-to-human interactions, the virus can transmit both ways. "It's another route of transmission that we have to worry about," says Kevin Olival, an ecologist at EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit that monitors for emerging diseases. "And if the virus somehow establishes itself in animal populations or in other wildlife populations around the world, it'll be really hard to eradicate it if it keeps spilling back into the human population."
https://www.wxxinews.org/post/dutch-minks-contract-covid-19-and-appear-infect-humans
... It's part of an emerging pattern of animals getting infected with the novel coronavirus with a new concern: The minks are thought to have passed the disease back to humans. Since the discovery, more than 500,000 minks have been culled on fur farms in the Netherlands over worries that their mink populations could spread the virus among humans.
The minks were first exposed to the coronavirus by infected farm workers, according to Wim van der Poel, a veterinarian who studies viruses at Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands. Then the virus spread among the animals in the farms like wildfire.
... The findings from the mink farm adds an concerning layer to our understanding of how the virus spreads because infected minks are thought to have passed the virus back to people, according to Dutch government reports. At least two farm workers are believed to have caught the novel coronavirus from handling the minks or breathing virus-contaminated clouds of dust.
The situation confirms a longstanding concern among researchers which has, until now, been hypothetical: In some animal-to-human interactions, the virus can transmit both ways. "It's another route of transmission that we have to worry about," says Kevin Olival, an ecologist at EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit that monitors for emerging diseases. "And if the virus somehow establishes itself in animal populations or in other wildlife populations around the world, it'll be really hard to eradicate it if it keeps spilling back into the human population."
https://www.wxxinews.org/post/dutch-minks-contract-covid-19-and-appear-infect-humans
