Denmark to exhume millions of minks culled over Covid mutation

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Copenhagen: Denmark will dig up hundreds of thousands of lifeless mink after a hasty cull and burial supposed to stamp out a coronavirus mutation ended with the rotting carcasses triggering a brand new contamination danger.

The Danish parliament agreed on Sunday to dig up about 4 million mink, the Ministry of Meals and Veterinary Affairs stated. The animals will probably be exhumed after six months, which was deemed lengthy sufficient to make sure the our bodies will probably be freed from the virus and secure to deal with. As soon as dug up, the mink will probably be incinerated as company waste.

The federal government is making an attempt to bring to an end a chapter that compelled a Cupboard minister to resign, and ended Denmark’s status as a rustic that had fought off the pandemic extra ably than most.

Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has needed to defend her position within the debacle, after it emerged she didn’t initially have the authorized mandate to demand a full cull of Denmark’s roughly 15.4 million mink. The rushed and messy course of that adopted drew harsh criticism from parliament and the nation’s mink business, which just some months in the past had been the world’s largest.

However Frederiksen has repeated her preliminary warning that her authorities’s determination to demand that every one Danish mink be culled was applicable. The nation’s high epidemiologist warned on the time that the animals have been extremely environment friendly at spreading the coronavirus, and Frederiksen stated Danish scientists have been fearful that the mutation discovered within the nation’s mink may derail vaccine efforts.

The mink danger

There are a variety of different international locations that produce mink and which have detected coronavirus strains within the animals, particularly Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden and the U.S. None has to this point taken the identical drastic steps as Denmark.

In early November, the World Well being Group stated that the coronavirus mutation present in Denmark “highlights the necessary position that farmed mink populations can play within the ongoing transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and the crucial position of sturdy surveillance, sampling and sequencing SARS-CoV-2, particularly round areas the place such animal reservoirs are recognized.”

The group stated then it advises “all international locations to boost surveillance for Covid-19 on the animal-human interface the place inclined animal reservoirs are recognized, together with mink farms.”

Additionally learn: Why Mauritius is culling an endangered fruit bat that exists nowhere else

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