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WARSAW A strain of the coronavirus discovered in mink on a farm in northern Poland can be transmitted to humans and vice versa, the agriculture ministry said on Saturday.
COVID-19 was found in mink in Kartuzy county late last month, in what agriculture officials said was the first such case in Poland, raising fears of costly culls in an industry that counts over 350 farms in the country.
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“Data obtained from the chief sanitary inspectorate and last year’s experiences in Denmark and the Netherlands clearly indicate that also in Poland, this virus can spread from mink to humans and vice versa,” the ministry said in a statement.
A SARS-CoV-2 strain found on a Polish mink farm can be directly transmitted from the animals to humans and vice versa, the Agriculture Ministry has said.
Follow RT on Poland said that the coronavirus found in local mink can be transmitted to humans and vice versa. Millions of animals were previously culled and buried in Denmark, which prompted fears of groundwater contamination.
The research
“clearly shows” that
“this virus can spread from mink to humans and vice versa,” the country’s agriculture ministry said in a statement on Saturday.
Officials said the new data came from a genetic study on minks from a farm in the Kartuzy district of northern Poland. The presence of the coronavirus in the animals was confirmed last month.
The chief sanitary inspectorate reported in November that 18 mink farm workers had tested positive for Covid-19, but said at the time there was no evidence of the virus being contracted from the animals.