Researcher Wim van der Poel of Wageningen University & Research is concerned about the most recent corona contamination that has been detected at a mink farm in Rijkevoort. All animals tested there were found to be infected with the virus. This means that the infection was discovered quite late and that the virus was able to hang around for a longer period of time, which meant that there was a greater risk of further spread.
According to Van der Poel, the 27 mink companies that have been found to be infected with SARS Cov-2 can be divided into five clusters. This means that the source of the contamination within those clusters is the same, research has shown. That source can be an employee or a visitor who introduced the virus to the various companies. But it can also be because an animal or manure has been brought from one farm to another.
The very first infections on mink farms were caused by transmission from humans to mink, according to Van der Poel. “We know for sure because we can determine that an employee of a company, for example, was infected earlier than that mink was infected, and the virus showed clear similarities. We can no longer accurately trace the source for subsequent infections. But we do see connections between the infections on different farms. ”
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