It seems that the warnings many in the zoo community have been giving about the risks of COVID spreading to captive animals have still not been taken so seriously.
6 months ago it was highlighted that COVID-19 was passed to captive mink in Denmark by humans and then passed back to them after it had mutated, but even now most news channels are not highlighting the seriousness of the virus mutation that has already taken place. Travel from Denmark to other countries around the planet and the spreading the new strain is a real concern for many: people travelling out of Denmark back to the UK for example are currently simply being asked to self-isolate.
The new strain has the potential to spread rapidly, as it did with the initial COVID-19 virus, and be undetected due to its similarity with the current strain of COVID. It seems the new strain may well affect the human’s ability to produce antibodies, taking natural resistance to any COVID and potentially rendering all future vaccines useless. Let us hope that it is well contained and that other captive animals, especially mammals at greater risk in captivity around the world, including pet ferrets, do not catch COVID-19 or allow it to mutate further. Interestingly, because ferrets can catch Covid-19 so easily they may actually aid us to deal with it.
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