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Studies regarding animal-to-human transmission of the COVID virus was around for some time, but only recently, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has finally confirmed it. At least 4 persons had contracted a COVID variant from animals in 2020, the US health agency confirmed. Two of them are employees of a Michigan mink farm that saw a COVID outbreak in 2020. Two others are nearby residents. Recent reports suggested that the variant that came from minks wildly circulated in the area during that time.
Samples of the virus collected from all four people contained two mutations that scientists have hypothesized may be signs of adaptation to mink, Dr. Casey Barton Behravesh, who directs the C.D.C.’s One Health Office, told New York Times.
But this theory cannot be conclusively proved. “Because there are few genetic sequences available from the communities around the farm, it is impossible to know for sure whether the mutations came from mink on the farm or were already circulating in the community," she said.
The same mutant version of the virus has been reported from mink farms in Europe and people connected with that farm. Similar cases of mink-to-human transmission have also been reported in Denmark, the Netherlands and elsewhere.
Overall, transmission of the virus from animals to humans is believed to be rare. Humans are far more likely to spread the virus to one another, or to other species, than they are to catch it from animals, experts say. But it is not impossible.
In the past two years, we have witnessed an explosive rise in the number of COVID cases, this could be due to animal to human transmission but cannot be stated for sure. More study is needed on the topic.