Fears over mutated Covid virus from mink lead to Denmark flight ban

A worker at a mink farm in Herning, Denmark, prepares to cull his animals following the discovery of a new coronavirus strain

Credit: Ole Jensen/Getty Images Europe

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Flights between Denmark and the UK were banned on Friday night to prevent the spread of a mutated Covid virus from mink that scientists fear could counter the effectiveness of a vaccine.

The flights ban is the first in the UK since the start of the pandemic and follows the discovery of a mutated form of coronavirus, which can spread to humans, in Danish mink farms.

Health officials are expected to trace and test some 3,000 people who flew in to the UK from Denmark in the past week via the travel corridor opened by the Department for Transport (DfT) on October 25. The DfT ordered the closure of the corridor at 4am on Friday.

Anyone arriving from or who has travelled through Denmark will be expected to quarantine for 14 days, although it was not clear on Friday night whether people who had returned from Denmark would also be asked to self-isolate.

The move came as it emerged a further 355 people had died in the UK within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of Friday. The Government said that, as of 9am on Friday, there had been a further 23,287 lab-confirmed cases in the UK. 

A mass testing programme was launched in Liverpool on Friday and Boris Johnson announced that there would be three other – as yet unnamed – cities across the country in which the programme is soon to be rolled out. 

Denmark, the biggest producer of mink fur in the world, is culling 17 million of the animals after the Covid outbreaks on farms.

Tests by Danish scientists found that when Covid-19 jumped from humans into mink on fur farms, its spike proteins – which allow it to invade cells – mutated to make it easier for it to infect the animals.

But when it was transmitted back into humans it carried the mutation with it, which the scientists said made Covid-19 antibodies less effective and could make the virus more resistant to vaccines currently being developed.

The mutated strain of the virus has been found in 11 people living in North Jutland, which has been placed in lockdown, and one person living in neighbouring Zealand.