With Denmark, which will slaughter all of its mink, five other countries, including the United States, have so far reported cases of Covid-19 in farms, according to the World Health Organization (WHO ).
“To date, six countries, namely Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Italy and the United States have reported cases of SARS-CoV-2 in mink farms from the World Organization for Animal Health, ”the WHO said in a statement.
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The announcement comes after Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen on Wednesday announced the culling of all of the country's more than 15 million mink, claiming that a mutated version of SARS-Cov-2, which could threaten the efficacy of a future vaccine, had been transmitted by these animals to twelve people.
A breeding in Naestved, Denmark / Mads Claus Rasmussen / REUTERS
The mutation of a virus is trivial and often harmless, according to the scientific community.
But in the case of this strain, called "Cluster 5", it implies, according to the first studies, a lower efficiency of human antibodies, which threatens the development of a vaccine against Covid-19.
A "moderately reduced sensitivity to neutralizing antibodies"
"The first observations suggest that the clinical presentation, the severity and the transmission of infected persons are similar to those of other SARS-CoV-2 viruses in circulation", notes the WHO.
"However, this variant, called
cluster 5
variant
, presents a combination of mutations or changes that had not been observed before", adds the UN specialized agency, stressing that "the implications of the changes identified in this variant are not not yet fully understood ”.
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Preliminary results, notes the WHO, indicate that this particular variant associated with mink, identified both in mink and in the 12 human cases, exhibits "moderately reduced sensitivity to neutralizing antibodies".
WHO is asking for new scientific and laboratory studies to be set up to verify these results and understand what the consequences could be on the development of treatments and vaccines.
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"Although it is believed that the virus is ancestrally linked to bats, the origin of the virus and the intermediate host (s) of SARS-CoV-2 have not yet been identified," recalls the WHO.
