Day 102: The Minks Have It

Once again Russia is in the mixed news; by surpassing the UK in cases today, they have raised the question of whether they have achieved second place after the US, or remain in third place after Spain. As readers may recall from Day 90, Spain reports only cases with PCR testing in their case count, but the ranking sites include cases from antibody testing. (Note that probable but untested cases are not included at all, leading to some serious undercounting there.) This disparity has exceeded 40,000 cases at this point. That may sound like a lot, but Russia will probably have its #2 title in under a week regardless even if they keep on burning down ICUs with defective ventilators.

In late April two Dutch fur farms were quarantined due to coronavirus infection in the minks, which showed respiratory symptoms. Roadblocks were set up pending testing of air and dust samples at the farms. Although the two farms were relatively close together (six miles apart), the minks were suspected to have been infected by workers at the farms. Although it's unclear from the reports what species of mink is farmed there, it seems that the European mink (Mustela lutreola) is endangered and hard to breed in captivity, while the American mink (Neovison vison) is more amenable to farming and is probably the infected animal.

Minks are related to ferrets, which have previously been shown to be susceptible to COVID-19, though the American mink is more distant from the ferret than the European version. So it's not surprising that in the crowded conditions of a farm the virus is (apparently) passing from animal to animal. (If you feel sorry for the minks, don't worry; fur farming in Holland is scheduled to end in 2024.) In fact, ProMED noted a preprint from China that used deep learning algorithms to conclude that bat and mink were likely intermediate species for the transfer of SARS-CoV-2 to humans.

Last week two more Dutch mink farms were quarantined with similar outbreaks. Some pneumonia deaths among the affected minks have been observed. Since it is now mink breeding season, it has also been discovered that the disease especially affects pregnant minks (unlike pregnant humans). Rabbit farms are also being screened for coronavirus, but no results have been released thus far. While no evidence of the spread of coronavirus from mink to human has yet surfaced, PlagueBlog recommends caution when farming mink (which remains legal in the US).

In other animal news, a French cat was reported infected at the end of April, and a robotic dog from Boston Dynamics is herding people in Singapore.

PlagueBlog is going out on a limb here and predicting that the uptick in Massachusetts cases will be 1% again today.