The SARS-CoV2, the virus causing Covid-19 has mutated in mink (a mammal) and appears to spread to humans in Denmark, according to scientists. While the
new mutation has been found in other countries that do not have a mink population, indicating a human-human spread, scientists are watching India closely.
Danish scientists have expressed concern that mutations in the mink-related version could make future vaccines ineffective and Denmark prime minister Mette Frederiksen has ordered culling of 17 million minks after a cluster of human cases were linked to mink farms.
However, there’s no evidence of the mutation in India so far, but scientists say: “It has not been found as ‘yet’.” India’s Director-General of Foreign Trade has banned the import of mink fur since January 3, 2017 and minks are not native to India.
But given that these mutations have appeared in humans in countries where minks are not native, it could ultimately find its way to India.
“We’re keeping a close watch on these mutations, especially the one called ‘Y453F’ in the Spike protein of the virus. My colleague Dr Laurence Wilson and I have analysed the 1,99,321 genome sequences of SARS-CoV-2 available on the global repository (
GISAID) as of November 13. There are no sequences with this mutation reported yet from India or Australia,” India-born Prof SS Vasan told TOI.
Vasan leads the Covid-19 research at the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness, the high-containment facility of Australia’s science agency CSIRO and has also been studying mutations of different kinds.
“Y453F” is a virologist’s codeword to say that at position number 453 of the Spike protein, there is 'a change in the aminoacid from Y to F. Another mutation which has now become the dominant form worldwide including India, is D614G – which indicates that there is a change in the aminoacid from D to G in position 614.
Vasan published the first peer-reviewed paper on how this virus is evolving and that vaccines will be likely unaffected by the D614G mutation or the ‘G strain’.
“It’s early days with Y453F and we have to wait for not just laboratory data but also population-level data”, he said, adding “this virus will mutate – there is nothing alarming about that per se. We have previously shown that ‘G strain’ is unlikely to affect vaccines. It is too early to assess the impact of this new mutation, especially since it has only been detected in a small number of countries.”
“Of the 1,99,321 sequences of the virus on GISAID, 389 have this mutation – 342 from people, 42 from American mink (Neovison vison) and the remaining from European mink (Mustela lutreola)”, he said.
These animals are closely related to ferrets, which Professor Vasan’s team showed for the first time in the world, are susceptible to this virus – as TOI reported first. “Ferrets (Mustela putorius furo) are the same genus as the European mink and the same family as the American mink. So far, the mink-related virus sequences are all from The Netherlands, except eight from American mink in Denmark”, Vasan added.
The 342 isolates from humans are mostly from Denmark (329), with the remaining from
Faroe Islands (1), Netherlands (6), Russia (1), South Africa (2),
Switzerland (2), and USA (1).
“339 of these have no associated de-identified information on the patients from whom these samples were taken. So it is hard to comment on the link between these mutations and outcomes such as mild/moderate/severe/critical disease because there are other factors like age, gender and co-morbidities that we don’t know about”, he said.
Scientists in Europe where this mutation is present are leading the efforts to understand the impact of these ‘mink mutations’. CSIRO will be supporting these efforts and continue to play our part in tackling this pandemic through global collaboration.