A man is tested at a COVID-19 testing facility in Times Square, New York, on March 28, 2022. (Xinhua News Agency)
LOS ANGELES, April 25 (Xinhua) -- National Geographic magazine recently reported that a large number of government documents show that at the end of 2020, the new crown virus in Michigan was suspected of spreading from mink to people. The CENTERS for Disease Control and Prevention was aware of this, but delayed it for at least 3 months before releasing it to the public, and did not publicly issue a statement, but only "quietly" updated the relevant information on its website so that it did not attract widespread attention.
The thousands of pages of documents obtained by the media, made publicly available by the U.S. government under the Freedom of Information Act, included e-mails between the CDC and Michigan public health officials. The report said that these documents revealed for the first time the "behind-the-scenes information" of the US CDC's investigation into the suspected "sable-to-human" incident of the new coronavirus in Michigan.
According to the email, after Michigan confirmed that mink had been infected with the new crown virus on farms, the state's public health officials formally requested the help of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on October 8, 2020. A few days later, the CDC sent four veterinary epidemiologists to Michigan to collect samples of the virus from infected mink and people around farms to investigate the spread of the virus. Genetic analysis of virus samples from two mink farm employees and two infected people not associated with mink found that they were infected with a special variant of the new coronavirus that had previously been found in mink in Europe and had been "mink-to-human" .
People walk past a COVID-19 testing site outside a World Trade Center station in New York, U.S., on March 29, 2022. (Photo by Xinhua news agency reporter Wang Ying)
The REPORT said that the CDC only "quietly" updated the situation on its website in March 2021 after learning of the possible "sable-to-human" incident of the new coronavirus at Mink farms in Michigan, the report said. Since it is not officially released, there is almost no media coverage except for a message published on the website of the Free Press in Detroit in the United States in April 2021.
National Geographic reported that there is little known information about the four infected people, but it is certain that two of them have no connection to the mink farm and have been infected with a special variant of the mink-related strain. This indicates that the mutated strain has spread beyond the farm, where community transmission has occurred and has continued for months.
The relevant information found by Xinhua News Agency from the website of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that the new crown virus may be introduced into the farm by employees infected with the new crown and transmitted to mink. The virus can be transmitted between minks or from mink to other animals on farms, including dogs, cats, etc. Mink may also transmit the virus to mink farm personnel. The Netherlands, Denmark and Poland have previously found cases of "sable-to-human transmission" of the new coronavirus, and "new data show that this is also happening in the United States."
As for why the findings were not officially made public, the CDC explained that the news was "not surprising or surprising" because similar cases had already been seen in Europe. Nick Spinelli, a spokesman for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has said that the genomes of the new coronavirus samples of the four suspected "mink-borne" cases have been uploaded to the Influenza Data Sharing Global Initiative platform from November 4, 2020 to February 23, 2021, so it is already public information. However, the database requires users to register an account, understand how to browse, and understand the genome sequence map to read the relevant information.
Passengers wear masks at Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, on April 14, 2022, wearing masks to check in at the terminal. (Xinhua News Agency)
National Geographic reported that throughout the CDC's investigation, its spokesperson repeatedly stated that "there is no evidence of a 'mink-to-human' incident of the new coronavirus in the United States", but the content of Spinelli's email and statements show that on November 4, 2020, the virus samples of two new coronavirus infected people at Michigan's mink farm were confirmed to have mink-related mutations; in late December, the genome of the virus sample of the third infected person was sequenced and uploaded to the Influenza Data Sharing Global Initiative platform.
Researchers said the CDC's delay in releasing suspected "mink-to-human" information is likely to hinder effective surveillance of the spread of the new coronavirus, so that the virus can spread to other species and mutate, and then evolve into a more dangerous and more transmissible mutant strain and return to humans.
Scott Weiss, a professor at the University of Gulfer Public Health Centre in Canada and head of infection control at the School of Veterinary Medicine, said that "this reminds us that transparency is very important" and that the faster we know, the faster we can take action. If information on suspected "animal-to-human transmission" of the coronavirus is released earlier, it may help other countries better monitor the outbreak and take countermeasures.
Source: Xinhua News Agency