September 17, 2020

expert reaction to unpublished conference abstract looking at SARS-CoV-2 infections at mink farms in the Netherlands

A conference abstract, presented at the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases Conference on Coronavirus Disease (ECCVID), discusses SARS-CoV-2 infections at mink farms in the Netherlands.

Prof Sally Cutler, Professor of Medical Microbiology, University of East London (UEL), said:

“The quality of this abstract could be improved, particularly by inclusion of data, however this topic has been addressed and already published in June by the same group.  The abstract gives no real detail beyond what is in the published study¹.”

1 ‘SARS-CoV-2 infection in farmed minks, the Netherlands, April and May 2020’ by Nadia Oreshkova et al was published in June 2020 in Eurosurveillance

Dr Dalan Bailey, Viral Glycoproteins Group Leader, The Pirbright Institute, said:

“This appears to be a large study spread across multiple mink farms and involving hundreds of thousands of potentially infected animals.  The key strength of this study is the genome sequencing of the SARS-CoV-2 isolated from mink and people.  Small mutations in the genome of this virus occur naturally over time and mapping these mutations over the course of an outbreak can be used to track the infection, an approach that was also taken during the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.

“This abstract states that a small number of infections occurring on these Dutch farms were possibly the result of infected mink passing on the virus to people, but without the full peer reviewed results it is difficult to draw firm conclusions.  However, if correct, this could have important implications for how we monitor SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks in the future.  In addition, the significance of these findings to the spread of the human pandemic – >29 million cases worldwide – needs to be better understood.

“As the results have not yet been peer reviewed, final judgement should be reserved for the published studies.”

The abstract ‘Jumping back and forth: anthropozoonotic and zoonotic transmission of SARS-CoV-2 on mink farms’ by B. Oude Munnink et al. has been press released from the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases Conference on Coronavirus Disease (ECCVID). 

There is no paper and this is not peer-reviewed.

Declared interests

None received.