‘Promiscuous’ virus may mutate via rodents

CORONAVIRUS is “promiscuous” and could jump into rats, mice, voles and ferrets and mutate before reinfecting humans, a senior government adviser has warned.

The alert came after more than 200 people were diagnosed with minkrelated coronavirus, a mutated form of the disease. Millions of farmed mink have been culled in Denmark.

Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, and a member of the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), speaking at a Royal Society of Medicine webinar yesterday, said: “The reason why this is so worrying is it shows how promiscuous this virus is.

“Minks are essentially the canary in the coal mine for this. They’re telling us that this virus can jump back and forth between humans and animals.”

Sir Jeremy added: “It could easily get established in an animal population, not just minks that are found in Denmark, but other rodents, ferrets, voles, potentially rats and mice, and allow it to evolve in those animal populations and come back in future years into the human population as a revolving door.

And once that happens, you’re putting both human and animal pressure on the spike protein and other proteins such that you will see continued evolution, and I think that’s the concern, rather than those poor mink who lost their lives in Denmark.”

However, Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the US, said in a Chatham House briefing: “It does not appear at this point that the mutation that has been identified in the minks is going to have an impact on vaccines and the effect of vaccine-induced immune response.”