In tears, the Danish prime minister apologizes for the mink slaughter. After all, what is it all about? – Here I’m

Denmark is the world’s largest supplier of mink fur, accounting for 40% of global production, with China and Hong Kong as the main export markets.

There are 1,139 mink farms in Denmark, employing around 6,000 people, who now admit that the massive slaughter of these animals will put an end to this activity.

However, the situation has changed in recent weeks. In early November, Denmark, the world’s largest exporter of these mammals’ fur, announced that more than 15 million mink in the country would be slaughtered after it was discovered that a mutation in the coronavirus present in animals could compromise the effectiveness of future vaccines. In addition, the mutation has already infected more than 200 people in Denmark, with the first infections being detected among people working on mink farms, but also among the local population.

However, days later, the government had to recognize that it did not have a sufficient legal basis to order this measure.

The then Minister of Agriculture, Mogens Jensen, apologized and ended up resigning last week.

After Jensen’s resignation, the Ministry of Health concluded that the potential threat to human vaccines was “most likely extinct” as there were no more cases of animals or humans infected with this version of the virus (called Cluster 5).

The Prime Minister in tears

The head of government visited a mink farm in the municipality of Kolding on Thursday – where all the animals were slaughtered despite being healthy, which the Executive did not have the legal right to do, as was later shown.

“I have no problem apologizing for the course of events, because mistakes have been made,” Frederiksen told TV2.

Visibly moved, the prime minister stopped several times to wipe his tears, stressing that it is important to remember that the fault lies not with the creators.

“It is because of the coronavirus and I hope there may be some light at the end of the tunnel for Danish mink farmers right now,” he added.

According to the latest toll, more than two thirds of the estimated 15-17 million mink in Denmark have already been slaughtered.

A case that is not unique in Denmark

In May, Dutch authorities announced they had banned the transport of mink skins across the country after two agricultural workers in the south of the country had “probably” contracted covid-19 through those small mammals.

At the time, it was said that these possible contaminations could be the “first known cases of transmission” of the novel coronavirus from animal to human, according to the WHO.

In this context, the government of the Netherlands has made covid-19 screening mandatory in all mink farms in the country, where animals are reared for the purpose of using fur.

However, health authorities were reported to believe that the risk of contamination outside the four Dutch farms where the infected mink were registered was “marginal”.

This month, on November 24, Polish scientists detected the first cases of the novel coronavirus in mink in the country, after examining 91 animals raised in captivity and confirming the infection in eight of them.

Coronavirus cases have been detected in a mink farm in the Pomerania region of northern Poland.

The findings from Polish scientists came two days after the French government ordered the slaughter of all minks from captivity after an analysis showed that a mutant version of the novel coronavirus was circulating among animals, hence the case. begins. widespread throughout Europe.

Could the mutation found in mink really run the course of the pandemic?

Although information on the mutation led to the announcement of drastic measures in the Nordic country, namely with the culling of some 15 million of these animals, and the World Health Organization (WHO) and the European Center for Prevention and disease control (ECDC), in the acronym in English) also spoke, virologist Maria João Amorim, principal researcher at the Gulbenkian Institute of Science (IGC), dismissed any alarmism.

“There is no more serious disease and there hasn’t even been transmissibility [uma questão] lifted up. It still doesn’t seem worrying to me, “said the scientist, who relied on known data to refute an important impact on altering the Spike protein, which allows it to bind to cells:” Immunity is much more complex. In addition to preventing entry, there are other mechanisms that may not prevent entry, but cause a less severe infection ”.

In turn, immunologist Luís Graça, professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon, acknowledged that “the differences between animals and humans provide an evolutionary stimulus for the virus to adapt and become different” and that this ” Evolutionary pressure “in animal hosts may give rise to increasing mutations, but he argued that this is a common process among viruses and does not necessarily carry a greater risk.

“With the data we have available, it’s not a particularly dangerous variant. No more than one variant is transmitted – which means there is no selective pressure to spread faster in the world than another – and it does not cause a more severe disease than the other variants in the community, “stressed.

According to the researcher of the Institute of Molecular Medicine (iMM), the main difference in the variant identified in the mink in Denmark and which has reached humans is in the “moderate reduction of the ability to neutralize antibodies”. As a result, people previously infected with the new coronavirus would be more likely to get a new infection with this variant.