Denmark to Kill Up to 17M Minks After Discovering Mutated Coronavirus

https://www.npr.org/2020/11/05/931726205/denmark-to-kill-up-to-17-million-minks-after-discovering-mutated-coronavirus

by haswell • 6 years ago

3 2 6 years ago

superkuh• 6 years ago

This is a serious problem. Ferrets are the best (and common) animal model for viral infection of the human upper respiratory pathway due to similar expresion and distribution of sugars on the external (epithelial) cells lining it. Mink are pretty close but not the same. sars-cov-2 adapted for mink upper respiratory epithelial cells is probably different enough that different codings of the spike protein will be more effective, but close enough to humans/ferrets to re-infect humans. That the Denmark cases show current sars-cov-2 antibodies don't help is disturbing. It might imply a coding change in some external protein. I am surprised there's no spike protein sequences for this already available online.

It's worth noting that Wisconsin USA mink farms have sars-cov-2 infection problems as well. And farms in Norway and the Netherlands. It's good that Denmark is taking this seriously since there's so much cross infection but it could happen everywhere else on earth where Mustela are farmed in quantity.

It makes me wonder if the entire stage 1/2 compressed trials for each vaccine type would have to be re-run or if they'd just change the coding on approved vaccines and do only phase 3 trials.

lbeltrame• 6 years ago

It's not that they don't help, they have a reduced affinity, which is different from no affinity.

For a rational discussion, see the thread in the r/COVID19 subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/jo2muy/mink_and_co...

Denmark to Kill Up to 17M Minks After Discovering Mutated Coronavirus

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