Why Utah’s wild mink COVID-19 case matters

On March 6, 2020, a sexagenarian Utahn, who returned to the east shore of the Great Salt Lake after vacationing on the coronavirus-haunted Grand Princess cruise ship, tested positive for COVID-19. It was the pandemic’s first knock on Utah’s door. Then-Governor Gary Herbert declared a state of emergency on the same day. In the following months, COVID-19 would spread to over 300,000 people in the state and wreak havoc on at least 12,000 minks, the discreet, short-legged, fluffy mammals known for their colorful, luxurious pelts.

The country’s first cases in mink were confirmed in mid-August, when two employees working at Utah fur farms infected five minks. Suspecting spillover of the virus to wildlife, researchers with the United States Department of Agriculture began to screen wildlife for COVID-19 in proximity to fur farm outbreaks. In December, their worry was confirmed: A wild mink, trapped just outside of a farm tested positive.

The mink was “asymptomatic” and “humanely euthanized upon capture to allow for tissue sampling and testing,” Gail Keirn, a spokesperson for the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service told High Country News by email. At this time, researchers are not concerned that COVID-19 will decimate wild mink populations because their solitary lifestyles provide limited opportunity for one to spread the virus to others.

COVID-19 blew the fur business in the West last year. Data from the USDA shows that multi-generation farms in Utah, Idaho and Oregon yielded more than a third of nearly 3 million mink-pelt products made in the country in 2019. But the industry’s production has declined since its peak in 2014, and pelts grown in the United States have plunged by more than a quarter.

Compounding that challenge on mink farmers, at least 12 of the more than 30 mink farms in Utah have experienced COVID-19 outbreaks since last August.

In a late December statement, Utah’s Department of Agriculture and Food said COVID-19 wiped out nearly half of the breeding herds in the facilities. In Oregon, one of its 11 fur farms was quarantined after an outbreak sickened minks and humans. Among the three escaped minks, two tested positive for the coronavirus. Environmental organizations have since argued for the infected plant’s closure. “It’s clear that this facility poses too great of a threat to wildlife and public health to continue operating,” said Lori Ann Burd, environmental health director at the Center for Biological Diversity. 

In Denmark and the Netherlands, minks contracted the virus and passed it on to people, leading to millions of minks culled and farms shut down permanently. Danish public health authorities also warned that some variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, contained mutations from the country’s fur farm outbreaks. No mink-to-human transmissions have been reported in the United States. But scientists fear rampant spread, like those in Utah, and further mutations could jeopardize vaccines.

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