Photographer: Morten Stricker / AFP / Getty Images
Photographer: Morten Stricker / AFP / Getty Images
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Denmark will unearth millions of dead minks after a hasty slaughter and burial to eliminate a coronavirus mutation caused by rotten carcasses triggering a new risk of contamination.
Danish parliament agrees to unearth about 4 million minks on Sunday, Ministry of Food and Veterinary Medicine said. The animals will be exhumed after six months, which was considered long enough to ensure that the bodies will be virus-free and safe to handle. Once unearthed, the mink will be incinerated as corporate waste.
The government is trying to end a chapter that forced a cabinet minister to resign and put an end to Denmark’s reputation as a country that fought the pandemic more skillfully than most.
Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen had to defend her role in the disaster, after it emerged that she did not initially have the legal mandate to demand a complete slaughter of some 15.4 million minks in Denmark. The hasty and disorderly process that followed drew harsh criticism from the country’s parliament and mink industry, which just a few months ago had been the largest in the world.
But Frederiksen reiterated his warning that his government’s decision to demand the sacrifice of all Danish minks was appropriate. The country’s top epidemiologist warned at the time that the animals were extremely effective in spreading the coronavirus, and Frederiksen said Danish scientists were concerned that the mutation found 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 USA. None of them have taken the same drastic steps so far as Denmark.
In early November, the World Health Organization said that the coronavirus mutation found in Denmark “highlights the important role that farmed 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 areas where such animal reservoirs are identified. “
The organization said it was advising “all countries to improve Covid-19 surveillance at the animal-human interface where reservoirs of susceptible animals are identified, including mink farms”.