Dutch Minks Contract COVID-19 — And Appear To Infect Humans
This outbreak of COVID-19 adds to the list of animals that can contract the disease. And, in this instance, the minks seem to have passed the virus on to humans.
Minks on two fur farms in the Netherlands began getting sick in late April. Some were coughing, with runny noses; others had signs of severe respiratory disease. Soon, they started dying.
Researchers took swabs from the animals and dissected the ones that had died.
The culprit: SARS-COV-2, the novel coronavirus causing a global pandemic.
It's part of an emerging pattern of animals getting infected with the novel coronavirus with a new concern: The minks are thought to have passed the disease back to humans. Since the discovery, more than 500,000 minks have been
