Photographer: Morten Stricker / AFP / Getty Images
Photographer: Morten Stricker / AFP / Getty Images
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Denmark will unearth millions of minks killed after a hasty murder and burial intended to erase a mutation in the coronavirus that ended up with decaying carcasses that caused a new risk of contamination.
The Danish parliament agreed on Sunday to excavate about 4 million minks, the Ministry of Food and Veterinary Affairs dit. The animals will be exhumed after six months, which was considered long enough to ensure that the bodies are free of the virus and safe to handle. Once excavated, the mink will be incinerated as corporate waste.
The government is trying to close a chapter that forced a cabinet minister to resign and ended Denmark’s reputation as a country that had fought the pandemic more skillfully than most.
Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has had to defend her role in the debacle, after it was revealed that she initially did not have the legal mandate to demand the total massacre of the Danish mink, approximately 15.4 million. The hasty and disorderly process that followed provoked harsh criticism from the country’s parliament and mink industry, which a few months ago had been the largest in the world.
But Frederiksen has repeated his first warning that his government’s decision to demand the killing of the entire Danish mink was appropriate. The country’s top epidemiologist warned at the time that the animals were very efficient in spreading the coronavirus, and Frederiksen said Danish scientists were concerned that the mutation in the country’s mink could derail vaccination efforts.
The risk of mink
There are a number of other mink-producing countries that have detected coronavirus strains in animals, namely Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United States None has so far taken the same drastic steps as Denmark. .
In early November, the World Health Organization said the coronavirus mutation found in Denmark “highlights the important role that culture mink populations can play in the continuous transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and the critical role of strong surveillance, sampling and sequencing. of SARS-CoV-2, especially in the areas where these animal reservoirs are identified ”.
The organization then said it advises “all countries to improve surveillance of Covid-19 at the animal-human interface where reservoirs of susceptible animals, including mink farms, are identified.”