Skip to content
A Member of the Law Professor Blogs Network

Coronavirus rips through Dutch mink farms, triggering culls to prevent human infections | Science | AAAS

LELYSTAD, THE NETHERLANDS In a sad sideshow to the COVID-19 pandemic, authorities in the Netherlands began to gas tens of thousands of mink on 6 June, most of them pups born only weeks ago. SARS-CoV-2 has attacked farms that raise the animals for fur, and the Dutch government worries infected mink could become a viral reservoir that could cause new outbreaks in humans.

The mink outbreaks are spillover from the human pandemic a zoonosis in reverse that has offered scientists in the Netherlands a unique chance to study how the virus jumps between species and burns through large animal populations.

via www.sciencemag.org

Isn’t this weird behavior for a virus?
H/t instapundit.