What if the Covid-19 pandemic that has killed nearly 2 million people worldwide had come out of a fur farm in China?
An article published this Friday by Chinese virologists in the journal Science proposes to study more closely the role of the mink which could well be the missing link between the bat and the man.
Mink rather than pangolin as an intermediate host of the virus?
One year after the onset of Covid, the origin of the disease is still largely unknown.
We know that it comes from a bat tank.
But the virus which infects these nocturnal animals cannot be caught directly by humans.
One or more intermediate “hosts” are therefore needed, an animal in whose organism the disease has mutated sufficiently to become transmissible to humans.
There is no evidence that it is the pangolin at the beginning pointed out.
The American mink, the one we breed to make coats, is a good suspect.
This little mustelid catches and transmits the human Covid.
"What is intriguing is the extent to which the disease seems to pass from humans to mink and vice versa, as if the path had already been traced", notes Alexandre Hassanin, zoologist at the National Museum of Natural History.
We saw it in Denmark where livestock workers had caught a mutant Covid.
Which resulted in the slaughter of 16 million mink.
In France, only the animals of a farm in Eure-et-Loir were killed after contamination.
Covid-19: a first contaminated mink farm in France
However, China is the largest producer of fur in the world.
The farms where these carnivores, solitary in the wild, live in tiny cages stacked on top of each other constitute "a permanent culture medium", analyzes Jean-Luc Angot, president of the Veterinary Academy of France.
"The virus could have mutated there so as to cross the species barrier," explains the animal health specialist.
On the same model, other animals bred for their fur, such as raccoon dogs
(Editor's note: a kind of raccoons) in
particular also make strong candidates.
"
But how would these farm animals come into contact with wild bats?
“In the hangars, there may very well be,” indicates Alexandre Hassanin.
With us they are found in churches.
"
A transmission accelerator in Europe?
A Dutch study showed in the spring that the virus was circulating at high speed in Dutch fur farms and that there is "a faster rate of evolution in mink", which may make the Covid more effective.
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Some people wonder about the role of these farms in Italy, the first European focus.
Lombardy, where the disease emerged, is home to half of the country's mink farms.
At the very beginning of 2020, Italy recorded its first deaths near two of them, that of Crema and that of Capralba.
In addition, the Italian variant which has supplanted the original Chinese strain in Europe, could be the result of recombination in a mink farm in the north of the country.
“I find this hypothesis less solid.
Lombardy is also a region of intense exchanges with China ”, relativizes Jean-Luc Angot.
China blocks investigation into virus origin
Where scientists agree, on the other hand, is that a year after the emergence of the disease, more investigations are needed in China.
“Mink is one hypothesis among many.
Problem, we are sorely lacking data from Chinese farms for example, ”points out Etienne Decroly, researcher at CNRS.
“If the global pandemic really starts from a farm, it is important to know that and deal with the problem,” he insists.
But Beijing seems to block the investigation.
The expert mission on the origin of the WHO, whose arrival in Wuhan has been planned for months, continues to be postponed.
On Tuesday January 5, two of the team members were already on their way to Beijing when they learned that the Chinese authorities had not granted them visas.