Mink may have infected farm worker with coronavirus in the Netherlands

A person who worked on a farm where mink are bred to export their fur contracted the coronavirus from the animals, Dutch Agriculture Minister Carola Schouten said in a letter to parliament.

Outbreaks on mink farms in the Netherlands were first reported in April, when keepers noticed some animals having difficulty breathing, prompting a wider investigation.

In her letter, Schouten acknowledged that earlier advisories from her office that people could infect animals, but not the other way around, was wrong. But she said the Netherlands’ Institute for Public Health still assesses as minimal the chance of transmission outside of the animals’ stalls, Reuters reported.

Her letter did not specify details of the affected worker’s condition.