Italy, Spain and Sweden are the other countries that have discovered SARS-CoV-2 in mink, the WHO said.
Copenhagen, Denmark:
Denmark and the United States are among six countries that have reported new cases of coronavirus linked to mink farms, the World Health Organization has said.
Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden are the other countries to have discovered SARS-CoV-2 in mink, the WHO said in a statement.
Denmark has imposed strict measures in the north of the country after warning that a mutation in the virus has passed from mink to humans and infected 12 people.
Copenhagen has warned that the mutation could threaten the effectiveness of any future vaccine and ordered the culling of all the estimated 15 to 17 million mink in the country.
Britain on Saturday banned entry to all non-resident aliens from Denmark after the discovery of the mutation linked to mink farms in humans.
Scientists say viral mutations are common and often harmless, and this does not cause more serious illness in humans.
But Danish health officials have expressed concern that this strain, known as ‘Cluster 5’, is not inhibited by antibodies to the same degree as the normal virus, which they say could threaten the effectiveness of vaccines. under development around the world.
“Initial observations suggest that the clinical presentation, severity and transmission among infected individuals are similar to other circulating SARS-CoV-2 viruses,” the WHO statement said on Friday.
“However, this variant … the ‘cluster 5’ variant, had a combination of mutations, or changes that were not previously seen. The implications of the changes identified in this variant are not yet fully understood,” said warned the WHO.
The United Nations agency said preliminary results indicated that this mink-associated variant had “moderately reduced sensitivity to neutralizing antibodies.”
The WHO called for new studies to verify the preliminary results and “to understand all the potential implications of this discovery in terms of diagnostics, therapies and vaccines in development.”
“Although the virus is believed to be ancestrally linked to bats, its origin and intermediate host (s) of SARS-CoV-2 have not yet been identified,” WHO noted.
As of June 2020, 214 human cases of COVID-19 have been identified in Denmark with variants of SARS-CoV-2 associated with farmed mink, including 12 cases with a single variant, reported on November 5.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
