New Delhi (NVI): Spanish authorities have ordered the culling of almost 1,00,000 mink following an outbreak at a farm, where the animals are bred for fur, after a number of them tested positive for the novel coronavirus.
The outbreak in north-easter Spain’s Aragón province was discovered after a farm employee’s wife contracted the virus in May.
Her husband and six other farm workers have since tested positive for the disease.
The Department of Agriculture, Livestock and Environment of Spain’s Aragon region said in a statement that it had ordered the slaughter of 92,700 mink after seven workers on the farm tested positive for Covid-19 and the animals were found to be infected with the coronavirus, according to media reports.
The mink, bred for their prized fur, were isolated and monitored closely after the workers became infected.
As a precaution the department shut down the farm, in Teruel, on May 22, for monitoring before conducting a number of tests at random, which initially returned a negative result. However, subsequent tests, the most recent of which was July 7, confirmed 78 out of 90 animals tested – infected with the coronavirus.
Notably, it has been known for a while that mink can catch the infection. And the conditions in a mink farm are such that the disease can spread quickly from one animal to another.
This is however, not the first mink farm to face a coronavirus outbreak. In May, Dutch authorities introduced mandatory testing in mink farms in the Netherlands after they said they believed a mink might have passed on the COVID-19 virus to a human. This lead to the culling of up to one million mink in two dozen farms in the country, according to a report by CNN.
Along with Madrid and Catalonia, Aragón is one of the coronavirus hotspots in Spain, where more than 2,50,000 infections and 28,000 deaths have been recorded since the start of the pandemic.
-CHK
